ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Astronomers have detected a mysterious ring of carbon monoxide gas around the young star V1052 Cen, which is about 700 light years away in the southern constellation Centaurus.
The ring is part of the star’s planet-forming disk, and it’s as far from V1052 Cen as Earth is from the sun. Discovered with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, its edges are uniquely crisp. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — A new, large mosaic from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) showcases a vast stretch of cosmic clouds bubbling with new star birth. The region — a 1,000-square-degree chunk of our Milky Way galaxy — is home to numerous star-forming clouds, where massive stars have blown out bubbles in the gas and dust.
“Massive stars sweep up and destroy their natal clouds, but they continuously spark new stars to form along the way,” said WISE Mission Scientist Dave Leisawitz of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Leisawitz is co-author of a new paper reporting the results in the Astrophysical Journal. “Occasionally a new, massive star forms, perpetuating the sequence of events and giving rise to the dazzling fireworks display seen in this WISE mosaic.” (more…)
Just in time for the holidays, astronomers have come across a new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, that some say resembles a wreath. You might even think of the red dust cloud as a cheery red bow, and the bluish-white stars as silver bells. This star-forming nebula is named Barnard 3. Baby stars are being born throughout the dusty region, while the “silver bell” stars are located both in front of, and behind, the nebula.
The bright star in the middle of the red cloud, called HD 278942, is so luminous that it is likely causing most of the surrounding clouds to glow. The red cloud is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions. The yellow-green region poking into the picture from the left like a sprig of holly is similar to the rest of the green “wreath” material, only more dense. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The same principle that causes figure skaters to spin faster as they draw their arms into their bodies has now been used by Michigan State University researchers to understand how molecules move energy around following the absorption of light.
Conservation of angular momentum is a fundamental property of nature, one that astronomers use to detect the presence of satellites circling distant planets. In 1927, it was proposed that this principle should apply to chemical reactions, but a clear demonstration has never been achieved. (more…)
Astronomers at Yale University have discovered what appear to be three fast-growing supermassive black holes in a relatively young, still-forming galaxy.
The discovery raises the possibility that this type of black hole continues to form billions of years after the Big Bang, challenging current theory. Astronomers previously thought all supermassive black holes emerged soon after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — A team of astronomers including Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy of The University of Texas at Austin have discovered the most massive black holes to date — two monsters weighing as much as 10 billion suns and threatening to consume anything, even light, within a region five times the size of our solar system.
The research is published in the Dec. 8 issue of the journal Nature in a paper headlined by graduate student Nicholas McConnell and professor Chung-Pei Ma of the University of California, Berkeley. (more…)
TORONTO, ON – Three astronomers at the University of Toronto have found the most numerous batch of young, supermassive stars yet observed in our galaxy: hundreds of thousands of stars, including several hundreds of the most massive kind –blue stars dozens of times heavier than our Sun. The light these newborn stars emit is so intense it has pushed out and heated the gas that gave them birth, carving out a glowing hollow shell about a hundred light-years across.
These findings will be published in the December 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. For the researchers, the next step is already clear: “By studying these supermassive stars and the shell surrounding them, we hope to learn more about how energy is transmitted in such extreme environments,” says Mubdi Rahman, a PhD candidate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, who led the work with his supervisors, Professors Dae-Sik Moon and Christopher Matzner. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— In work that could help advance astronomers’ understanding of dark matter, University of Michigan researchers have discovered two additional dwarf galaxies that appear to be satellites of Andromeda, the closest spiral galaxy to Earth.
Eric Bell, an associate professor in astronomy, and Colin Slater, an astronomy Ph.D. student, found Andromeda XXVIII and XXIX—that’s 28 and 29. They did it by using a tested star-counting technique on the newest data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has mapped more than a third of the night sky. They also used follow-up data from the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii. (more…)
