Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Mostrar todas las entradas

martes, 18 de febrero de 2014

NASA : IGR J11014-6103: Runaway Pulsar Firing an Extraordinary Jet


IGR J11014-6103: Runaway Pulsar Firing an Extraordinary Jet
An extraordinary jet trailing behind a runaway pulsar is seen in this composite image that contains data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), radio data from the Australia Compact Telescope Array (green), and optical data from the 2MASS survey (red, green, and blue). The pulsar - a spinning neutron star - and its tail are found in the lower right of this image. The tail stretches for 37 light years , making it the longest jet ever seen from an object in the Milky Way galaxy, as described in our press release.
The pulsar, originally discovered by ESA's INTEGRAL satellite, is called IGR J1104-6103 and is moving away from the center of the supernova remnant where it was born at a speed between 2.5 million and 5 million miles per hour. This supersonic pace makes IGR J1104-6103 one of the fastest moving pulsars ever observed.
A massive star ran out of fuel and collapsed to form the pulsar along with the supernova remnant, the debris field seen as the large purple structure in the upper left of the image. The supernova remnant (known as SNR MSH 11-61A) is elongated along the top-right to bottom left direction, roughly in line with the tail's direction. These features and the high speed of the pulsar suggest that jets could have played an important role in the supernova explosion that formed IGR J1104-6103.
In addition to its exceptional length, the tail behind IGR J1104-6103 has other interesting characteristics. For example, there is a distinct corkscrew pattern in the jet. This pattern suggests that the pulsar is wobbling like a top as it spins, while shooting off the jet of particles.
Another interesting feature of this image is a structure called a pulsar wind nebula (PWN), a cocoon of high-energy particles that enshrouds the pulsar and produces a comet-like tail behind it. Astronomers had seen the PWN in previous observations, but the new Chandra and ATCA data show that the PWN is almost perpendicular to the direction of the jet. This is intriguing because usually the pulsar's direction of motion, its jet, and its PWN are aligned with one another.
One possibility requires an extremely fast rotation speed for the iron core of the star that exploded as the supernova. A problem with this scenario is that such fast speeds are not commonly expected to be achievable.
A paper, led by Lucia Pavan of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, describing these results appears in the February 18th issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is also available online. Other authors include Pol Bordas (University of Tuebingen in Germany), Gerd Puehlhofer (Univ. of Tuebingen), Miroslav Filipovic (University of Western Sydney in Australia), A. De Horta (Univ. of Western Sydney), A. O'Brien (Univ. of Western Sydney), M. Balbo (Univ. of Geneva), R. Walter (Univ. of Geneva), E. Bozzo (Univ. of Geneva), C. Ferrigno (Univ. of Geneva), E. Crawford (Univ. of Western Sydney), and L. Stella (INAF).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ISDC/L.Pavan et al, Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

viernes, 1 de noviembre de 2013

NASA : 3C353: Giant Plumes of Radiation


Jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies can transport huge amounts of energy across great distances. 3C353 is a wide, double-lobed source where the galaxy is the tiny point in the center and giant plumes of radiation can be seen in X-rays from Chandra (purple) and radio data from the Very Large Array (orange).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Tokyo Institute of Technology/J.Kataoka et al, Radio: NRAO/VLA
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

domingo, 14 de julio de 2013

NASA - NASA and Japanese Space Agency Discuss Space Cooperation

 
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and JAXA President Naoki Okumura
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, welcomes JAXA (Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency) President Naoki Okumura to NASA Headquarters
on Wednesday, July 10, 2013, in Washington. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
 
WASHINGTON -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) met in Washington Wednesday, July 10, to discuss the importance of international cooperation in space, especially the continued support for the International Space Station.
Bolden and Naoki Okumura also discussed NASA's plans for a new asteroid initiative, previously announced in President Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget proposal. Okumura welcomed the opportunity to discuss JAXA's potential contribution based on experience through its Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission. This is Okumura's first bilateral meeting with NASA since being named JAXA's president in April.
“NASA has enjoyed a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship with Japan in space exploration activities and we look forward to further discussions about our asteroid initiative,” said Bolden. "We currently have more than 35 active agreements with JAXA in human spaceflight, Earth science, space science, and aeronautics, making Japan one of the agency’s leading partners in civil space cooperation.”
NASA's asteroid initiative involves robotically capturing a small near-Earth asteroid and redirecting it safely to a stable lunar orbit where astronauts can visit and explore it.
Capturing and redirecting an asteroid integrates the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration capabilities and draws on the innovation of America's brightest scientists and engineers. The knowledge gained from the initiative will help us protect our planet, advance exploration capabilities and technologies for human spaceflight, and help us better utilize our space resources.
For more information about NASA visit:
 
Composite image of planetary nebula NGC 2392
Composite image of planetary nebula NGC 2392.
Image Credit:  X-ray: NASA/CXC/IAA-CSIC/N. Ruiz et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
Image Token:
Stars like the Sun can become remarkably photogenic at the end of their life. A good example is NGC 2392, which is located about 4,200 light years from Earth. NGC 2392, nicknamed the "Eskimo Nebula", is what astronomers call a planetary nebula. This designation, however, is deceiving because planetary nebulas actually have nothing to do with planets. The term is simply a historic relic since these objects looked like planetary disks to astronomers in earlier times looking through small optical telescopes.

Instead, planetary nebulas form when a star uses up all of the hydrogen in its core -- an event our Sun will go through in about five billion years. When this happens, the star begins to cool and expand, increasing its radius by tens to hundreds of times its original size. Eventually, the outer layers of the star are carried away by a thick 50,000 kilometer per hour wind, leaving behind a hot core. This hot core has a surface temperature of about 50,000 degrees Celsius, and is ejecting its outer layers in a much faster wind traveling six million kilometers per hour. The radiation from the hot star and the interaction of its fast wind with the slower wind creates the complex and filamentary shell of a planetary nebula. Eventually the remnant star will collapse to form a white dwarf star.
Now days, astronomers using space-based telescopes are able to observe planetary nebulas such as NGC 2392 in ways their scientific ancestors probably could never imagine. This composite image of NGC 2392 contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple showing the location of million-degree gas near the center of the planetary nebula. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope show – colored red, green, and blue – the intricate pattern of the outer layers of the star that have been ejected. The comet-shaped filaments form when the faster wind and radiation from the central star interact with cooler shells of dust and gas that were already ejected by the star.
The observations of NGC 2392 were part of a study of three planetary nebulas with hot gas in their center. The Chandra data show that NGC 2392 has unusually high levels of X-ray emission compared to the other two. This leads researchers to deduce that there is an unseen companion to the hot central star in NGC 2392. The interaction between a pair of binary stars could explain the elevated X-ray emission found there. Meanwhile, the fainter X-ray emission observed in the two other planetary nebulas in the sample – IC 418 and NGC 6826 – is likely produced by shock fronts (like sonic booms) in the wind from the central star. A composite image of NGC 6826 was included in a gallery of planetary nebulas released in 2012. [http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/]
A paper describing these results is available online and was published in the April 10th, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The first author is Nieves Ruiz of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) in Granada, Spain, and the other authors are You-Hua Chu, and Robert Gruendl from the University of Illinois, Urbana; Martín Guerrero from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) in Granada, Spain, and Ralf Jacob, Detlef Schönberner and Matthias Steffen from the Leibniz-Institut Für Astrophysik in Potsdam (AIP), Germany.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

sábado, 6 de julio de 2013

NASA - NASA'S Chandra Turns up Black Hole Bonanza in Galaxy Next Door

The Remarkable Remains of a Recent Supernova
June 26, 2013
Chandra observations of supernova remnant G1.90.3

Astronomers estimate that a star explodes as a supernova in our Galaxy, on average, about twice per century. In 2008, a team of scientists announced they discovered the remains of a supernova that is the most recent, in Earth's time frame, known to have occurred in the Milky Way.

The explosion would have been visible from Earth a little more than a hundred years ago if it had not been heavily obscured by dust and gas. Its likely location is about 28,000 light years from Earth near the center of the Milky Way. A long observation equivalent to more than 11 days of observations of its debris field, now known as the supernova remnant G1.9+0.3, with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is providing new details about this important event.

The source of G1.9+0.3 was most likely a white dwarf star that underwent a thermonuclear detonation and was destroyed after merging with another white dwarf, or pulling material from an orbiting companion star. This is a particular class of supernova explosions (known as Type Ia) that are used as distance indicators in cosmology because they are so consistent in brightness and incredibly luminous.

The explosion ejected stellar debris at high velocities, creating the supernova remnant that is seen today by Chandra and other telescopes. This new image is a composite from Chandra where low-energy X-rays are red, intermediate energies are green and higher-energy ones are blue. Also shown are optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey, with appearing stars in white. The new Chandra data, obtained in 2011, reveal that G1.9+0.3 has several remarkable properties.

The Chandra data show that most of the X-ray emission is "synchrotron radiation," produced by extremely energetic electrons accelerated in the rapidly expanding blast wave of the supernova. This emission gives information about the origin of cosmic rays - energetic particles that constantly strike the Earth's atmosphere - but not much information about Type Ia supernovas.

In addition, some of the X-ray emission comes from elements produced in the supernova, providing clues to the nature of the explosion. The long Chandra observation was required to dig out those clues.

Most Type Ia supernova remnants are symmetrical in shape, with debris evenly distributed in all directions. However, G1.9+0.3 exhibits an extremely asymmetric pattern. The strongest X-ray emission from elements like silicon, sulfur, and iron is found in the northern part of the remnant, giving an extremely asymmetric pattern.

Another exceptional feature of this remnant is that iron, which is expected to form deep in the doomed star's interior and move relatively slowly, is found far from the center and is moving at extremely high speeds of over 3.8 million miles per hour. The iron is mixed with lighter elements expected to form further out in the star.

Because of the uneven distribution of the remnant's debris and their extreme velocities, the researchers conclude that the original supernova explosion also had very unusual properties. That is, the explosion itself must have been highly non-uniform and unusually energetic.

By comparing the properties of the remnant with theoretical models, the researchers found hints about the explosion mechanism. Their favorite concept for what happened in G1.9+0.3 is a "delayed detonation," where the explosion occurs in two different phases. First, nuclear reactions occur in a slowly expanding wavefront, producing iron and similar elements. The energy from these reactions causes the star to expand, changing its density and allowing a much faster-moving detonation front of nuclear reactions to occur.

If the explosion were highly asymmetric, then there should be large variations in expansion rate in different parts of the remnant. These should be measurable with future observations with X-rays using Chandra and radio waves with the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array.

Observations of G1.9+0.3 allow astronomers a special, close-up view of a young supernova remnant and its rapidly changing debris. Many of these changes are driven by the radioactive decay of elements ejected in the explosion. For example, a large amount of antimatter should have formed after the explosion by radioactive decay of cobalt. Based on the estimated mass of iron, which is formed by radioactive decay of nickel to cobalt to iron, over a hundred million trillion (i.e. ten raised to the power of twenty) pounds of positrons, the antimatter counterpart to electrons, should have formed. However, nearly all of these positrons should have combined with electrons and been destroyed, so no direct observational signature of this antimatter should remain.

A paper describing these results is available online and will be published in the July 1, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The first author is Kazimierz Borkowski of North Carolina State University (NCSU), in Raleigh, NC and his co-authors are Stephen Reynolds, also of NCSU; Una Hwang from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD; David Green from Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK; Robert Petre, also from GSFC; Kalyani Krishnamurthy from Duke University in Durham, NC and Rebecca Willett, also from Duke University. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K. Borkowski et al.; Optical: DSS

› Read more/access all images
› Chandra's Flickr photoset

NASA'S Chandra Turns up Black Hole Bonanza in Galaxy Next Door
WASHINGTON - Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unprecedented bonanza of black holes in the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way.

Using more than 150 Chandra observations, spread over 13 years, researchers identified 26 black hole candidates, the largest number to date, in a galaxy outside our own. Many consider Andromeda to be a sister galaxy to the Milky Way. The two ultimately will collide, several billion years from now.

"While we are excited to find so many black holes in Andromeda, we think it's just the tip of the iceberg," said Robin Barnard of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., and lead author of a new paper describing these results. "Most black holes won't have close companions and will be invisible to us."

The black hole candidates belong to the stellar mass category, meaning they formed in the death throes of very massive stars and typically have masses five to 10 times that of our sun. Astronomers can detect these otherwise invisible objects as material is pulled from a companion star and heated up to produce radiation before it disappears into the black hole.

The first step in identifying these black holes was to make sure they were stellar mass systems in the Andromeda Galaxy itself, rather than supermassive black holes at the hearts of more distant galaxies. To do this, the researchers used a new technique that draws on information about the brightness and variability of the X-ray sources in the Chandra data. In short, the stellar mass systems change much more quickly than the supermassive black holes.

To classify those Andromeda systems as black holes, astronomers observed that these X-ray sources had special characteristics: that is, they were brighter than a certain high level of X-rays and also had a particular X-ray color. Sources containing neutron stars, the dense cores of dead stars that would be the alternate explanation for these observations, do not show both of these features simultaneously. But sources containing black holes do.

The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory added crucial support for this work by providing X-ray spectra, the distribution of X-rays with energy, for some of the black hole candidates. The spectra are important information that helps determine the nature of these objects.

"By observing in snapshots covering more than a dozen years, we are able to build up a uniquely useful view of M31," said co-author Michael Garcia, also of CfA. "The resulting very long exposure allows us to test if individual sources are black holes or neutron stars."

The research group previously identified nine black hole candidates within the region covered by the Chandra data, and the present results increase the total to 35. Eight of these are associated with globular clusters, the ancient concentrations of stars distributed in a spherical pattern about the center of the galaxy. This also differentiates Andromeda from the Milky Way as astronomers have yet to find a similar black hole in one of the Milky Way's globular clusters.

Seven of these black hole candidates are within 1,000 light-years of the Andromeda Galaxy's center. That is more than the number of black hole candidates with similar properties located near the center of our own galaxy. This is not a surprise to astronomers because the bulge of stars in the middle of Andromeda is bigger, allowing more black holes to form.

"When it comes to finding black holes in the central region of a galaxy, it is indeed the case where bigger is better," said co-author Stephen Murray of Johns Hopkins University and CfA. "In the case of Andromeda we have a bigger bulge and a bigger supermassive black hole than in the Milky Way, so we expect more smaller black holes are made there as well."

This new work confirms predictions made earlier in the Chandra mission about the properties of X-ray sources near the center of M31. Earlier research by Rasmus Voss and Marat Gilfanov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, used Chandra to show there was an unusually large number of X-ray sources near the center of M31. They predicted most of these extra X-ray sources would contain black holes that had encountered and captured low mass stars. This new detection of seven black hole candidates close to the center of M31 gives strong support to these claims.

"We are particularly excited to see so many black hole candidates this close to the center, because we expected to see them and have been searching for years," said Barnard.

These results will be published in the June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Many of the Andromeda observations were made within Chandra's Guaranteed Time Observer program.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:
 

For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit:
 

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

sábado, 8 de junio de 2013

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.

artistic depiction of early universe
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


 
 
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

domingo, 19 de mayo de 2013

NASA - Black Hole-Powered Jets Plow Into Galaxy


Composite image of 4C29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth

This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF’s Very Large Array (pink).

This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.

The X-ray data show a different aspect of this galaxy, tracing the location of hot gas. The bright X-rays in the center of the image mark a pool of million-degree gas around the black hole. Some of this material may eventually be consumed by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could in turn, trigger more output to the radio jet.

Most of the low-energy X-rays from the vicinity of the black hole are absorbed by dust and gas, probably in the shape of a giant doughnut around the black hole. This doughnut, or torus blocks all the optical light produced near the black hole, so astronomers refer to this type of source as a hidden or buried black hole. The optical light seen in the image is from the stars in the galaxy.

The bright spots in X-ray and radio emission on the outer edges of the galaxy, near the ends of the jets, are caused by extremely high energy electrons following curved paths around magnetic field lines. They show where a jet generated by the black hole has plowed into clumps of material in the galaxy (mouse over the image for the location of these bright spots). Much of the energy of the jet goes into heating the gas in these clumps, and some of it goes into dragging cool gas along the direction of the jet. Both the heating and the dragging can limit the fuel supply for the supermassive black hole, leading to temporary starvation and stopping its growth. This feedback process is thought to cause the observed correlation between the mass of the supermassive black hole and the combined mass of the stars in the central region or bulge or a galaxy.

These results were reported in two different papers. The first, which concentrated on the effects of the jets on the galaxy, is available online and was published in the May 10, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. It is led by Aneta Siemiginowska from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA and the co-authors are Łukasz Stawarz, from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Yoshinodai, Japan; Teddy Cheung from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC; Thomas Aldcroft from CfA; Jill Bechtold from University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ; Douglas Burke from CfA; Daniel Evans from CfA; Joanna Holt from Leiden University in Leiden, The Netherlands; Marek Jamrozy from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; and Giulia Migliori from CfA. The second, which concentrated on the supermassive black hole, is available online and was published in the October 20, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. It is led by Malgorzata Sobolewska from CfA, and the co-authors are Aneta Siemiginowska, Giulia Migliori, Łukasz Stawarz, Marek Jamrozy, Daniel Evans, and Teddy Cheung.

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

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Siemiginowska et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

› Read more/access all images
› Chandra's Flickr photoset
 
 
J.D. Harrington, 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson, 256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov

Megan Watzke 617-496-7998
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

domingo, 9 de diciembre de 2012

NASA - Searching for the Best Black Hole Recipe

Ring Galaxy NGC 922

Composite image of ring galaxy NGC 922

In this holiday season of home cooking and carefully-honed recipes, some astronomers are asking: what is the best mix of ingredients for stars to make the largest number of plump black holes?

They are tackling this problem by studying the number of black holes in galaxies with different compositions. One of these galaxies, the ring galaxy NGC 922, is seen in this composite image containing X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (red) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (pink, yellow and blue).

NGC 922 was formed by the collision between two galaxies – one seen in this image and another located outside the field of view. This collision triggered the formation of new stars in the shape of a ring. Some of these were massive stars that evolved and collapsed to form black holes.

Most of the bright X-ray sources in Chandra's image of NGC 922 are black holes pulling material in from the winds of massive companion stars. Seven of these are what astronomers classify as "ultraluminous X-ray sources" (ULXs). These are thought to contain stellar-mass black holes that are at least ten times more massive than the sun, which places them in the upper range for this class of black hole. They are a different class from the supermassive black holes found at the centers of galaxies, which are millions to billions of times the mass of the sun.

Theoretical work suggests that the most massive stellar-mass black holes should form in environments containing a relatively small fraction of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, called “metals” by astronomers. In massive stars, the processes that drive matter away from the stars in stellar winds work less efficiently if the fraction of metals is smaller. Thus, stars with fewer of these metals among their ingredients should lose less of their mass through winds as they evolve. A consequence of this reduced mass loss is that a larger proportion of massive stars will collapse to form black holes when their nuclear fuel is exhausted. This theory appeared to be supported by the detection of a large number (12) of ULXs in the Cartwheel galaxy, where stars typically contain only about 30% of the metals found in the sun.

To test this theory, scientists studied NGC 922, which contains about the same fraction of metals as the sun, meaning that this galaxy is about three times richer in metals than the Cartwheel galaxy. Perhaps surprisingly, the number of ULXs found in NGC 922 is comparable to the number seen in the Cartwheel galaxy. Rather, the ULX tally appears to depend only on the rate at which stars are forming in the two galaxies, not on the fraction of metals they contain.

One explanation for these results is that the theory predicting the most massive stellar-mass black holes should form in metal poor conditions is incorrect. Another explanation is that the metal fraction in the Cartwheel galaxy is not low enough to have a clear effect on the production of unusually massive stellar-mass black holes, and therefore will not cause an enhancement in the number of ULXs. Recent models incorporating the evolution of stars suggest that a clear enhancement in the number of ULXs might only be seen when the metal fraction falls below about 15% of the Sun's value. Astronomers are investigating this possibility by observing galaxies with extremely low metal fractions using Chandra. The number of ULXs is being compared with the number found in galaxies with higher metal content. The results of this work will be published in a future paper.

A paper describing the results for NGC 922 was published in the March 10, 2012 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The authors were Andrea Prestwich and Jose Luis Galache of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA; Tim Linden from University of Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, CA; Vicky Kalogera from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL; Andreas Zezas from CfA and University of Crete in Crete, Greece; Tim Roberts from University of Durham in Durham, UK; Roy Kilgard from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT; Anna Wolter and Ginevra Trinchieri from INAF in Milano, Italy. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Prestwich et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

› Read more/access all images
› Chandra's Flickr photoset
 
 


J.D. Harrington, 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson, 256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov

Megan Watzke 617-496-7998
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
 NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

martes, 4 de septiembre de 2012

Astronomía: Una impactante superburbuja


Una impactante superburbuja
En esta colorida nueva imagen se muestra a la región de formación estelar LHA 120-N44 [1], localizada en la Gran Nube de Magallanes, una pequeña galaxia satélite de la Vía Láctea. La imagen combina la vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (ubicado en el Observatorio La Silla de ESO en Chile) con imágenes en luz infrarroja y rayos X provenientes de los telescopios espaciales en órbita.
En el centro de esta poblada región compuesta de gas, polvo y estrellas jóvenes se encuentra el cúmulo estelar NGC 1929. Sus masivas estrellas emiten grandes cantidades de radiación, expelen materia a grandes velocidades en forma de vientos estelares, y suelen tener una acelerada vida, terminando su corta pero brillante existencia estallando como supernovas. Los vientos y las ondas expansivas de las supernovas han abierto una enorme cavidad, llamada superburbuja, en el gas circundante.
Las observaciones realizadas con el Observatorio de rayos X Chandra de la NASA (aparece aquí en color azul) revelan regiones con altas temperaturas creadas por estos vientos y ondas, mientras que datos recolectados con luz infrarroja del Telescopio Espacial Spitzer  de la NASA (en rojo)  demarcan el lugar donde se encuentran el polvo y el gas más frío. La vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (en amarillo) completa la imagen, y muestra tanto a las estrellas jóvenes calientes como a las resplandecientes nubes de gas y polvo que las rodean. 
La combinación de imágenes de esta región ha permitido a los astrónomos resolver un misterio: ¿Por qué la N44, y otras superburbujas de similares características, están emitiendo rayos-X con tal intensidad? La respuesta parece ser que, adicionalmente, existen dos fuentes brillantes de rayos-X: las ondas expansivas de las supernovas que golpean las paredes de las cavidades, y el material caliente que se evapora de las paredes de dichas cavidades. Esta emisión de rayos-X desde el borde de la superburbuja se puede observar claramente en la imagen.

Enlaces

Notas

[1] La denominación de este objeto indica que ha sido incluido en el Catalogue of H-alpha emission stars and nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds  (El catálogo de estrellas y nebulosas de emisión H-alfa en las nubes de Magallanes), que fue compilado y publicado en 1956 por el astrónomo y astronauta estadounidense Karl Henize (1926–1993). La letra “N”  indica que es una nebulosa. A menudo al objeto se le denomina simplemente N44.
Crédito:
Optical: ESO, X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL
ESO
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

lunes, 23 de abril de 2012

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

domingo, 22 de abril de 2012

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

domingo, 15 de abril de 2012

Astronomía: Una "supercalculadora" simula por primera vez la estructuración del Universo

Hola amigos: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Un equipo francés de investigadores informó hoy de que gracias a una "supercalculadora" ha podido simular por primera vez la estructuración de todo el Universo observable, desde el Big-Bang hasta la actualidad, lo que constituye una "ayuda excepcional" a los proyectos de cartografía de ese espacio. Fotografía cedida por la Nasa hoy, martes 10 de enero de 2012, en la que se observa "El Gordo", el descubrimiento del mayor cúmulo de galaxias jóvenes detectado en el Universo, a siete millones de años luz de la Tierra. El anuncio se hizo durante la reunión anual de la Sociedad Astronómica Estadounidense que se celebra en Austin (Texas) y supone un nuevo logro para los científicos que trabajan con el Gran Telescopio de Atacama (Chile), considerado el instrumento óptico más avanzado del mundo, y el Observatorio de rayos X Chandra de la NASA. EFE/Cortesía NASA.

París, 13 abr (EFE).- Un equipo francés de investigadores informó hoy de que gracias a una "supercalculadora" ha podido simular por primera vez la estructuración de todo el Universo observable, desde el Big-Bang hasta la actualidad, lo que constituye una "ayuda excepcional" a los proyectos de cartografía de ese espacio.
Esta simulación realizada bajo el proyecto "DEUS: full universe run", y las que se llevarán a cabo hasta finales de mayo permitirán, según ese grupo, "comprender mejor la naturaleza de la energía oscura y su influencia sobre la estructuración del Universo y el origen de la distribución de la materia oscura y las galaxias".
La naturaleza de esa energía, fuente responsable de la expansión del Universo, constituye "una de las grandes cuestiones de la cosmología", explicó a Efe el director de ese equipo, Jean-Michel Alimi, quien añadió que analizar su impronta requería poder simular grandes volúmenes con alta precisión.
Los científicos del Laboratorio Universo y Teorías utilizaron para ello la nueva "supercalculadora" Curie del Gran Equipamiento Nacional francés de Cálculo Intensivo, que hizo posible el seguimiento de 550.000 millones de partículas.
El Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas (CNRS), uno de los entes participantes, indicó en un comunicado que desde ahora es posible recorrer "la distribución de la materia oscura y de las galaxias en todo el Universo en distancias equivalentes a 90.000 millones de años luz", así como observar su evolución.
Los datos generados con ese cálculo, cuyos resultados finales se difundirán en mayo, permiten igualmente medir las fluctuaciones de la materia oscura, algo que, según indicó Alimi a Efe, es importante porque ayuda a profundizar en las fuerzas existentes en el Universo y en sus propiedades.
El DEUS se sirve de simulaciones numéricas de alta precisión, algo que no había sido posible hasta ahora porque no se disponía de los medios ni de los modelos matemáticos necesarios para abordar volúmenes de ese tamaño.
El último intento al respecto, según Alimi, partió de un equipo estadounidense que alcanzó a calcular una octava parte del volumen del Universo y a seguir 300.000 millones de partículas, una cifra "insuficiente para estudiar su evolución y estructuración".
La máquina, dotada de más de 92.000 unidades de cálculo y capaz de realizar 2.000 billones de operaciones por segundo, es uno de los cinco aparatos más potentes del mundo, añade el CNRS en su nota.
Este proyecto, del que se esperan resultados finales en mayo, necesitará más de 30 millones de horas de cálculos y generará más de 150 petaoctetos de información (equivalentes a la capacidad de almacenamiento de 30 millones de DVD), de los que según el CNRS se hará una criba para guardar un petaocteto de datos útiles. EFEVerde.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

domingo, 4 de marzo de 2012

Astronomy: Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters. Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520
This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters. The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.

Superimposed on the image are "false-colored" maps showing the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. Starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, is colored orange. The green-tinted regions show hot gas, as detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe's mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster of galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.

The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision.

Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui



miércoles, 18 de enero de 2012

ASTRONOMY: Cygnus X-1: A Stellar Mass Black Hole; NASA's Chandra Contributes to Black Hole Birth Announcement

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as from radio, optical and other X-ray telescopes. On the left, an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows Cygnus X-1, outlined in a red box. Cygnus X-1 is located near large active regions of star formation in the Milky Way, as seen in this image that spans some 700 light years across. An artist's illustration on the right depicts what astronomers think is happening within the Cygnus X-1 system. Cygnus X-1 is a so-called stellar-mass black hole, a class of black holes that comes from the collapse of a massive star. The black hole pulls material from a massive, blue companion star toward it. This material forms a disk (shown in red and orange) that rotates around the black hole before falling into it or being redirected away from the black hole in the form of powerful jets.

A trio of papers with data from radio, optical and X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, has revealed new details about the birth of this famous black hole that took place millions of years ago. Using X-ray data from Chandra, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, scientists were able to determine the spin of Cygnus X-1 with unprecedented accuracy, showing that the black hole is spinning at very close to its maximum rate. Its event horizon -- the point of no return for material falling towards a black hole -- is spinning around more than 800 times a second.

Using optical observations of the companion star and its motion around its unseen companion, the team also made the most precise determination ever for the mass of Cygnus X-1, of 14.8 times the mass of the Sun. It was likely to have been almost this massive at birth, because of lack of time for it to grow appreciably.

The researchers also announced that they have made the most accurate distance estimate yet of Cygnus X-1 using the National Radio Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The new distance is about 6,070 light years from Earth. This accurate distance was a crucial ingredient for making the precise mass and spin determinations. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Optical: Digitized Sky Survey



NASA's Chandra Contributes to Black Hole Birth Announcement:

New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as from radio, optical and other X-ray telescopes.

Over three decades ago, Stephen Hawking placed -- and eventually lost -- a bet against the existence of a black hole in Cygnus X-1. Today, astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and with these latest studies they have remarkably precise values of its mass, spin, and distance from Earth. With these key pieces of information, the history of the black hole has been reconstructed.

"This new information gives us strong clues about how the black hole was born, what it weighed and how fast it was spinning," said author Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass.

"This is exciting because not much is known about the birth of black holes." Reid led one of three papers -- all appearing in the November 10th issue of The Astrophysical Journal -- describing these new results on Cygnus X-1.

The other papers were led by Jerome Orosz from San Diego State University and Lijun Gou, also from CfA. Cygnus X-1 is a so-called stellar-mass black hole, a class of black holes that comes from the collapse of a massive star.

The black hole is in close orbit with a massive, blue companion star. Using X-ray data from Chandra, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a team of scientists was able to determine the spin of Cygnus X-1 with unprecedented accuracy, showing that the black hole is spinning at very close to its maximum rate.

Its event horizon -- the point of no return for material falling towards a black hole -- is spinning around more than 800 times a second. An independent study that compared the evolutionary history of the companion star with theoretical models indicates that the black hole was born some 6 million years ago.

In this relatively short time (in astronomical terms), the black hole could not have pulled in enough gas to ramp up its spin very much. The implication is that Cygnus X-1 was likely born spinning very quickly.

Using optical observations of the companion star and its motion around its unseen companion, the team made the most precise determination ever for the mass of Cygnus X-1, of 14.8 times the mass of the Sun. It was likely to have been almost this massive at birth, because of lack of time for it to grow appreciably.

"We now know that Cygnus X-1 is one of the most massive stellar black holes in the Galaxy," said Orosz. "And, it's spinning as fast as any black hole we've ever seen." Knowledge of the mass, spin and charge gives a complete description of a black hole, according to the so-called "No Hair" theorem.

This theory postulates that all other information aside from these parameters is lost for eternity behind the event horizon. The charge for an astronomical black hole is expected to be almost zero, so only the mass and spin are needed.

"It is amazing to me that we have a complete description of this asteroid-sized object that is thousands of light years away," said Gou. "This means astronomers have a more complete understanding of this black hole than any other in our Galaxy."

The team also announced that they have made the most accurate distance estimate yet of Cygnus X-1 using the National Radio Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The new distance is about 6,070 light years from Earth. This accurate distance was a crucial ingredient for making the precise mass and spin determinations.

The radio observations also measured the motion of Cygnus X-1 through space, and this was combined with its measured velocity to give the three-dimensional velocity and position of the black hole.

This work showed that Cygnus X-1 is moving very slowly with respect to the Milky Way, implying it did not receive a large "kick" at birth. This supports an earlier conjecture that Cygnus X-1 was not born in a supernova, but instead may have resulted from the dark collapse of a progenitor star without an explosion.

The progenitor of Cygnus X-1 was likely an extremely massive star, which initially had a mass greater than about 100 times the sun before losing it in a vigorous stellar wind. In 1974, soon after Cygnus X-1 became a good candidate for a black hole, Stephen Hawking placed a bet with fellow astrophysicist Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, that Cygnus X-1 did not contain a black hole.

This was treated as an insurance policy by Hawking, who had done a lot of work on black holes and general relativity. By 1990, however, much more work on Cygnus X-1 had strengthened the evidence for it being a black hole.

With the help of family, nurses, and friends, Hawking broke into Thorne's office, found the framed bet, and conceded. "For forty years, Cygnus X-1 has been the iconic example of a black hole. However, despite Hawking's concession, I have never been completely convinced that it really does contain a black hole -- until now," said Thorne.

"The data and modeling described in these three papers at last provide a completely definitive description of this binary system." NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

More information is available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/chandra


Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui



martes, 27 de diciembre de 2011

Astronomy: Ring of Fire

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.Ring of Fire
This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array.

This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.A recent study shows the X-ray emission probably was caused by an outburst powered by the supermassive black hole located in the white region in the center of the galaxy.

Evidence for this idea comes from the elongation of the X-rays running from the top left to the bottom right and details of the X-ray spectrum. There are also signs of interactions between a central source and the surrounding gas, particularly the yellow arc of H II emission located above and to the left of the black hole.

NGC 4151 is located about 43 million light years away from the Earth and is one of the nearest galaxies that contains an actively growing black hole. Because of this proximity, it offers one of the best chances of studying the interaction between an active supermassive black hole and the surrounding gas of its host galaxy. Such interaction, or feedback, is recognized to play a key role in the growth of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. If the X-ray emission in NGC 4151 originates from hot gas heated by the outflow from the central black hole, it would be strong evidence for feedback from active black holes to the surrounding gas on galaxy scales. This would resemble the larger scale feedback, observed on galaxy cluster scales, from active black holes interacting with the surrounding gas, as seen in objects like the Perseus Cluster.

These results were published in the Aug. 20, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The authors were Junfeng Wang and Giuseppina Fabbiano from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA); Guido Risaliti from CfA and INAF-Arcetri Observatory, in Firenze, Italy; Martin Elvis from CfA; Carole Mundell from Liverpool John Moores University in Birkenhead, UK; Gaelle Dumas and Eva Schinnerer from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Heidelberg, Germany; and, Andreas Zezas from CfA and the University of Crete in Greece.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui



domingo, 25 de diciembre de 2011

ASTRONOMY: Celestial Bauble Intrigues Astronomers

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., With the holiday season in full swing, a new image from an assembly of telescopes reveals a pulsar that appears like a spinning cosmic ornament. Combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton were used in the discovery of a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC. This is the first time a pulsar, which is a spinning, ultra-dense star, has been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.Cosmic Ornament
With the holiday season in full swing, a new image from an assembly of telescopes reveals a pulsar that appears like a spinning cosmic ornament. Combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton were used in the discovery of a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC.

This is the first time a pulsar, which is a spinning, ultra-dense star, has been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are colored red and green.

The pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is the bright white source located on the right-hand side of the image in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell. The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence of a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar.

The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image. SXP 1062 interests astronomers because the Chandra and XMM-Newton data show that it is rotating unusually slowly -- about once every 18 minutes. (In contrast, some pulsars are found to revolve multiple times per second, including most newly born pulsars.)

This relatively leisurely pace of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray pulsars in the SMC.Scientists have estimated that the supernova remnant around SXP 1062 is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, as it appears in the image. This means that the pulsar is very young, from an astronomical perspective, since it was presumably formed in the same explosion that produced the supernova remnant.

Therefore, assuming that it was born with rapid spin, it is a mystery why SXP 1062 has been able to slow down by so much, so quickly. Work has already begun on theoretical models to understand the evolution of this unusual object.

Image Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Potsdam/L. Oskinova et al.
Guillermo Gonzalo sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com