Noble gas molecules have been detected in space for the first time in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant, by astronomers at UCL.
Led by Professor Mike Barlow (UCL Physics & Astronomy) the team used ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory to observe the Crab Nebula in far infrared light. (more…)
*For his discoveries about the lives and deaths of stars, the exotic physics of black holes and the origin of chemical elements, UA Regents’ Professor David Arnett has been honored with the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship.*
What happens when a star dies? How does a black hole form? What makes the chemical elements that form the building blocks of stars, planets and living beings?
Those are the kinds of questions that have fascinated David Arnett, a Regents’ Professor at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, from an early age. (more…)
About 3,700 years ago, people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. It slowly dimmed out of sight and was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers later found its remains, called Puppis A. In this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Puppis A looks less like the remains of a supernova explosion and more like a red rose.
Puppis A (pronounced PUP-pis) was formed when a massive star ended its life in a supernova, the most brilliant and powerful form of an explosion in the known universe. The expanding shock waves from that explosion are heating up the dust and gas clouds surrounding the supernova, causing them to glow and appear red in this infrared view. While much of the material from that original star was violently thrown out into space, some of it remained in an incredibly dense object called a neutron star. This particular neutron star (too faint to be seen in this image) is moving inexplicably fast: over 3 million miles per hour! Astronomers are perplexed over its absurd speed, and have nicknamed the object the “Cosmic Cannonball.” (more…)
