The image, taken by NASA's space-based Chandra Observatory telescope, shows an X-ray nebula 150 light years across.
It shows what appear to be ghostly blue fingers -- thumb and pinky clearly discernible from index, ring and middle digits -- reaching into a sparkling cloud of fiery red.
NASA says the display is caused by a young and powerful pulsar, known by the rather prosaic name of PSR B1509-58.
"The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand," NASA says.
The space agency says B1509 -- created by a collapsed star -- is one of the most powerful electromaginetic generators in the Galaxy. The nebula is formed by a torrent of electrons and ions emitted by the 1,700-year-old phenomenon.
The finger-like structures are apparently caused by "energizing knots of material in a neighboring gas cloud," NASA says.
Erratic Black Hole Regulates Itself ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — New results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made a major advance in explaining how a special class of black holes may shut off the high-speed jets they produce. These results suggest that these black holes have a mechanism for regulating the rate at which they grow.
Black holes come in many sizes: the supermassive ones, including those in quasars, which weigh in at millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, and the much smaller stellar-mass black holes which have measured masses in the range of about 7 to 25 times the Sun's mass. Some stellar-mass black holes launch powerful jets of particles and radiation, like seen in quasars, and are called "micro-quasars". The new study looks at a famous micro-quasar in our own Galaxy, and regions close to its event horizon, or point of no return. This system, GRS 1915+105 (GRS 1915 for short), contains a black hole about 14 times the mass of the Sun that is feeding off material from a nearby companion star. As the material swirls toward the black hole, an accretion disk forms. This system shows remarkably unpredictable and complicated variability ranging from timescales of seconds to months, including 14 different patterns of variation. These variations are caused by a poorly understood connection between the disk and the radio jet seen in GRS 1915. Chandra, with its spectrograph, has observed GRS 1915 eleven times since its launch in 1999. These studies reveal that the jet in GRS 1915 may be periodically choked off when a hot wind, seen in X-rays, is driven off the accretion disk around the black hole. The wind is believed to shut down the jet by depriving it of matter that would have otherwise fueled it. Conversely, once the wind dies down, the jet can re-emerge. "We think the jet and wind around this black hole are in a sort of tug of war," said Joseph Neilsen, Harvard graduate student and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Nature. "Sometimes one is winning and then, for reasons we don't entirely understand, the other one gets the upper hand." The latest Chandra results also show that the wind and the jet carry about the same amount of matter away from the black hole. This is evidence that the black hole is somehow regulating its accretion rate, which may be related to the toggling between mass expulsion via either a jet or a wind from the accretion disk. Self-regulation is a common topic when discussing supermassive black holes, but this is the first clear evidence for it in stellar-mass black holes. "It is exciting that we may be on the track of explaining two mysteries at the same time: how black hole jets can be shut down and also how black holes regulate their growth," said co-author Julia Lee, assistant professor in the Astronomy department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Maybe black holes can regulate themselves better than the financial markets!" Although micro-quasars and quasars differ in mass by factors of millions, they should show a similarity in behavior when their very different physical scales are taken into account. "If quasars and micro-quasars behave very differently, then we have a big problem to figure out why, because gravity treats them the same," said Neilsen. "So, our result is actually very reassuring, because it's one more link between these different types of black holes." The timescale for changes in behavior of a black hole should vary in proportion to the mass. For example, an hour-long timescale for changes in GRS 1915 would correspond to about 10,000 years for a supermassive black hole that weighs a billion times the mass of the Sun. "We cannot hope to explore at this level of detail in any single supermassive black hole system," said Lee. "So, we can learn a tremendous amount about black holes by just studying stellar-mass black holes like this one." It is not known what causes the jet to turn on again once the wind dies down, and this remains one of the major unsolved mysteries in astronomy. "Every major observatory, ground and space, has been used to study this black hole for the past two decades," said Neilsen. "Although we still don't have all the answers, we think our work is a step in the right direction." This was work made using Chandra's High Energy Transmission Gratings Spectrometer. These results appear in the March 26th issue of Nature. 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.
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thodoks wrote:
Man, they really will give anyone an internet connection these days.
Edo Berger got an alert early last Thursday morning when a satellite detected a 10-second blast of energy known as a gamma ray burst coming from outer space.
Telescopes around the world swiveled to focus on the explosion, soon picking up infrared radiation, which travels more slowly than gamma rays. Berger waited for the visible light which he expected to come next.
It never arrived.
"We were kind of blown away. We immediately knew what that meant," Berger said.
What it meant was that he was looking at the oldest thing ever spotted -- an enormous star exploding 13 billion years ago.
"At that point the age of the universe was only 600 million years," he said. In other words, Berger said, he was looking "95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time."
The star which exploded was 30 to 100 times larger than our own sun, and when it died, it gave off "about million times the amount of energy the sun will release in its entire lifetime," Berger told CNN by phone from Harvard University, where he is an assistant professor of astronomy.
Its death throes produced so much energy that "momentarily, we can essentially see it anywhere in the universe," Berger said.
The object, known as GRB 090423, is about 200 million years older than the previous record-holder for oldest object ever seen.
Berger isn't just interested in the record books, though -- the gamma ray burst extended the frontiers of human knowledge about the history of the universe.
"We learn that already massive stars were around 600 million years after the universe formed," Berger said. "We suspected that, but now we have proof. Now that we know these objects are so bright, in the next few years we should be able to pinpoint exactly at what stage in the evolution of the universe stars and galaxies formed."
"There are theories" about when that happened, Berger said, "But they are all over the place. People let their imaginations run wild."
Given the discovery last week -- which was announced Tuesday -- Berger thinks it is possible that he will soon have a clear answer.
"If we talk in a few years, hopefully I would be able to tell you exactly when that happened," he said.
The gamma radiation from GRB 090423, which took 13 billion years to reach earth, was detected by a NASA satellite called Swift. The infrared radiation was detected by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
Chris_H_2 wrote:
Interestingly, this pre-dates the Jewish dawn of man by roughly 12,999,999,993 years.
hahahaha.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
look close, you can see the earth and astronaut taking the photo:
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories coordinated by the University of Delaware, is synchronizing its lenses to provide round-the-clock coverage of a cooling star. As the star dims in the twilight of its life, scientists hope it will shed light on the workings of our own planet and other mysteries of the galaxy. The dying star, a white dwarf identified as WDJ1524-0030, located in the constellation Ophiuchus in the southern sky, is losing its brightness as it cools, its nuclear fuel spent. It will be monitored continuously from May 15 to June 11 by WET, a global partnership of telescopes which was formed in 1986. Like an international relay team, observers at Mt. Cuba Observatory in Greenville, Del., will focus on and photograph the white dwarf until sunrise, and then observers at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, and at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., will stand watch while the star is in their sky, followed by observers in New Zealand, Australia, China, and so on, around the globe. The thousands of photographs of the white dwarf taken by WET will be e-mailed to the command center at Mt. Cuba Observatory staffed by University of Delaware researchers, for archiving and eventual analysis using the fledgling science of “star quakes” known as asteroseismology. “A white dwarf is the size of the Earth and as dense as the sun. This star pulsates or quakes as waves of energy travel through it -- its outer surface sloshes from side to side, like waves on the ocean,” says Judi Provencial, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UD and director of the Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center (DARC). “What is of interest to scientists is the shape of the pulses,” Provencal notes. “From them, we can measure how the atmosphere is moving around in these pulsating stars and figure out what's going on inside them. This one is really sloshing around.” There are thousands of white dwarfs in our galaxy; however, only about 30 percent are bright enough for scientists to study using asteroseismics, which can determine the age, temperature and composition of a star from its oscillations and brightness. Provencal says that WDJ1524-0030 is one of only about 20 percent of the stars in the universe whose atmosphere is composed of helium versus hydrogen. The WET team hopes to find out the composition of the star's core, whether hydrogen or oxygen. The process of discovery will take on the order of two years to stitch together all of the images, analyze the data, interpret the data with the input of the WET community and report the results. Eventually, the findings will be applied to other stars, including the sun, and to our own planet, Provencal says. “We don't understand the weather on Earth, the transport of energy,” she says. “We don't understand convection at all. Hopefully, this field of research, which is still very new, will help every aspect of astronomy.” Putting the Observing Run into Focus Organizing all of the telescopes for an observing run may seem akin to aligning the planets. More than 20 telescopes are participating in the current run. Provencal and Susan Thompson, co-director of DARC, needed to submit applications for some of the major telescopes several years in advance. Only one in five proposals typically gets selected by such competitive research facilities as the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands. With a lens that is 4.2 meters in diameter, the telescope is the largest that has signed on to participate, Provencal says. Before the advent of the Internet, Provencal says she and her colleagues at the command center used to have to call each observatory on the telephone to participate. “In South Africa, we had to call the international operator, who could only get out to the telescope by a hand-cranked phone and you could hear that in the background. The Internet has taken some of the fun out of that, but France still likes to be called every day of the observing run,” Provencal says. “And at Peak-Turskol in Russia, the astronomers say they have several cats that like to participate.” Provencal says that she and her colleagues in the WET community like to study cooling stars “because it's cool.” While the administration of the Whole Earth Telescope is supported by the Crystal Trust Foundation, the observers are not paid to observe. “Without them, it wouldn't happen,” she says. “It's a community effort.”
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thodoks wrote:
Man, they really will give anyone an internet connection these days.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
Does anyone know if there have been polls on American belief in the big bang theory? What are the numbers like?
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
tyler wrote:
corduroy_blazer wrote:
Does anyone know if there have been polls on American belief in the big bang theory? What are the numbers like?
What would it tell you about people and society if you did have the numbers?
Depends on what the number says.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
[Look in the upper right portion of the planet to see the spot]
July 21, 2009, 8:59 am Amateur Finds New Earth-Sized Blot on Jupiter By Robert Mackey
NASA has confirmed the discovery of a new “scar” the size of the Earth in Jupiter’s atmosphere, apparently showing that the planet was hit by something large in recent days. The impact mark was first spotted on Monday morning by an amateur astronomer in Australia, who then drew the attention of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the change in Jupiter’s south polar region.
The apparent impact comes almost exactly 15 years after a comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter, “sending up blazing fireballs and churning the Jovian atmosphere into dark storms, one of them as large as Earth,” as The New York Times reported on July 19, 1994.
Images of the impact mark, as seen through a NASA telescope in Hawaii, were posted on the space agency’s Web site on Monday with this explanation:
Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark “scar” had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.
New infrared images show the likely impact point was near the south polar region, with a visibly dark “scar” and bright upwelling particles in the upper atmosphere detected in near-infrared wavelengths.
Glenn Orton, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said “It could be the impact of a comet, but we don’t know for sure yet.”
Mr. Orton told New Scientist magazine that the planet could have been hit by a block of ice or a comet that was too faint for astronomers to detect before the impact. Leigh Fletcher, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Lab told the magazine the impact scar “is about the size of the Earth.”
In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley, a 44-year-old computer programmer from a village north of Canberra, made the discovery “using his backyard 14.5-inch reflecting telescope.” The Herald explained: “Wesley, who has been keen on astronomy since he was a child, said telescopes and other astronomy equipment were so inexpensive now that the hobby had become a viable pastime for just about anybody. His own equipment cost about $10,000.”
Mr. Wesley recorded the discovery of the impact mark, and posted several of the first images he took of it, in an observation report he posted online:
I came back to the scope at about 12:40am I noticed a dark spot rotating into view in Jupiters south polar region started to get curious. When first seen close to the limb (and in poor conditions) it was only a vaguely dark spot, I thought likely to be just a normal dark polar storm. However as it rotated further into view, and the conditions improved I suddenly realised that it wasn’t just dark, it was black in all channels, meaning it was truly a black spot.
My next thought was that it must be either a dark moon (like Callisto) or a moon shadow, but it was in the wrong place and the wrong size. Also I’d noticed it was moving too slow to be a moon or shadow. As far as I could see it was rotating in sync with a nearby white oval storm that I was very familiar with - this could only mean that the back feature was at the cloud level and not a projected shadow from a moon. I started to get excited.
It took another 15 minutes to really believe that I was seeing something new - I’d imaged that exact region only 2 days earlier and checking back to that image showed no sign of any anomalous black spot.
Now I was caught between a rock and a hard place - I wanted to keep imaging but also I was aware of the importance of alerting others to this possible new event. Could it actually be an impact mark on Jupiter? I had no real idea, and the odds on that happening were so small as to be laughable, but I was really struggling to see any other possibility given the location of the mark. If it really was an impact mark then I had to start telling people, and quickly.
The Guardian reports that Mr. Wesley, who “spends about 20 hours a week on his passion of watching and photographing Jupiter,” almost missed making the discovery because he interrupted his work late on Sunday night to watch sports on television. Mr. Wesley told The Guardian:
I was imaging Jupiter until about midnight and seriously thought about packing up and going back to the house to watch the golf and the cricket. In the end I decided to just take a break and I went back to the house to watch Tom Watson almost make history.
I came back down half an hour later and I could see this black mark had turned into view.
In another interview, Mr. Wesley told the Sydney Morning Herald that spotting the impact mark on Jupiter made him glad the huge planet is in Earth’s neighborhood: “If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us.”
Update | 4:22 p.m. Since several readers objected that the previous update said what the 14.5 inches was not a measurement of (length), but did not state what it is a measurement of — it is the diameter of the telescope’s mirror.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
Pretty incredible. Thanks for posting.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
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