Tag Archives: sloan digital sky survey

Newly Found Dwarf Galaxies Could Help Reveal the Nature of Dark Matter

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…)

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Astrophysicists Find Evidence of Black Holes Ripping Stars Apart

*Sifting through observation data obtained of more than 2 million galaxies, a research team including UA astronomer Dennis Zaritsky has discovered phenomena telling of stars dying a violent death.

Astrophysicists at the University of Arizona and elsewhere have found evidence of black holes destroying stars, a long-sought phenomenon that provides a new window into general relativity.

The research, reported in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal, also opens up a method to search for the possible existence of a large population of presently undetectable “intermediate mass” black holes, which are hypothesized to be precursors to the super-massive black holes at the centers of most large galaxies. (more…)

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Measuring the Distant Universe in 3-D

*Berkeley Lab-led BOSS proves it can do the job with quasars*

The biggest 3-D map of the distant universe ever made, using light from 14,000 quasars — supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies many billions of light years away — has been constructed by scientists with the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III).

The map is the first major result from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), SDSS-III’s largest survey, whose principal investigator is David Schlegel of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The huge new map was presented at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Anaheim, CA, by Anže Slosar of Brookhaven National Laboratory. (more…)

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