Artists impression illustrating a supermassive black hole with X-ray emission emanating from its inner region (pink) and ultra-fast winds streaming from the surrounding disk (purple). Credit: ESA

ESA and NASA space telescopes have made the most detailed observation of an ultra-fast wind flowing from the vicinity of a black hole at nearly a quarter of the speed of light.

Outflowing gas is a common feature of the supermassive black holes that reside in the centre of large galaxies. Millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun, these black holes feed off the surrounding gas that swirls around them. Space telescopes see this as bright emissions, including X-rays, from the innermost part of the disc around the black hole.

Occasionally, the black holes eat too much and burp out an ultra-fast wind. These winds are an important characteristic to study because they could have a strong influence on regulating the growth of the host galaxy by clearing the surrounding gas away and therefore suppressing the birth of stars.

Using ESAs XMM-Newton and NASAs NuStar telescopes, scientists have now made the most detailed observation yet of such an outflow, coming from an active galaxy identified as IRAS 13224-3809. The winds recorded from the black hole reach 71 000 km/s 0.24 times the speed of light putting it in the top 5% of fastest known black hole winds.

XMM-Newton focused on the black hole for 17 days straight, revealing the extremely variable nature of the winds.

We often only have one observation of a particular object, then several months or even years later we observe it again and see if theres been a change, says Michael Parker of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, UK, lead author of the paper published in Nature this week that describes the new result.

Thanks to this long observation campaign, we observed changes in the winds on a timescale of less than an hour for the first time.

The changes were seen in the increasing temperature of the winds, a signature of their response to greater X-ray emission from the disc right next to the black hole.

Furthermore, the observations also revealed changes to the chemical fingerprints of the outflowing gas: as the X-ray emission increased, it stripped electrons in the wind from their atoms, erasing the wind signatures seen in the data.

The chemical fingerprints of the wind changed with the strength of the X-rays in less than an hour, hundreds of times faster than ever seen before, says co-author Andrew Fabian, also from the Institute of Astronomy and principal investigator of the project.

It allows us to link the X-ray emission arising from the infalling material into the black hole, to the variability of the outflowing wind farther away.

Finding such variability, and finding evidence for this link, is a key step in understanding how black hole winds are launched and accelerated, which in turn is an essential part of understanding their ability to moderate star formation in the host galaxy, adds Norbert Schartel, ESAs XMM-Newton Project Scientist.

Read the original:

Rapid changes point to origin of ultra-fast black hole winds - Astronomy Now Online

Maddie Gardner, WFMY 8:58 AM. EST March 03, 2017

JAMESTOWN, NC -- This weekend is "looking up." The GTCC Astronomy Fair is happening March 3rd and 4th on the Jamestown Campus. This year's theme is "eclipse" in anticipation for the Great American Eclipse that's happening later this year.

The first lecture will begin at 7 PM Friday. It's titled "Natures Grandest Spectacle: How, Where, and Why to View the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse and David Baron, science journalist, author, and broadcaster, will be the speaker. Saturday will be a full day starting at 8:30 AM and lasting until 5:00. There will be four seminars at 8:30 AM, 11:00 AM, 2:00 PM and 3:30 PM.

There will also be demonstrations, displays, prize drawings and how-to help for astronomy beginners throughout the weekend. On Saturday at 12:30 they'll host a solar observation in the Cline Observatory if the weather is nice.

For a full list of events check out their website:http://observatory.gtcc.edu/tristar/.

( 2017 WFMY)

View original post here:

Get Your Head In The Clouds At The GTCC Astronomy Festival - WFMYNews2.com

Science Daily

Astronomy: Dark matter mapped -- ScienceDaily Science Daily One of the highest-resolution maps of dark matter ever created has now been revealed, offering a detailed case for the existence of cold dark matter -- sluggish ... and more »

Read this article:

Astronomy: Dark matter mapped -- ScienceDaily - Science Daily

NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn is deeply involved with the agency's next major observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in 2018. Credit: Chris Gunn, NASA Advertisement |

Report Ad

Where did we come from? How did we get here? Are we alone?

At its core, astronomy is the science tasked with addressing these existential questions that lie at the heart of what it means to be human. And for more than a quarter century one observatory more than any other has brought us closer to answers: The Hubble Space Telescope.

Stationed in low Earth orbit above the starlight-scattering atmosphere, Hubbles 2.4-meter mirror and state-of-the-art instruments have allowed scientists to glimpse far-distant galaxies formed in the universes infancy, the births of stars right here in our own Milky Way and even a handful of worlds orbiting other suns. With each groundbreaking observation, Hubble helped fill in details of what might be the greatest story ever to be told: How galaxies, stars, planets and ultimately life itself emerged from the big bangs primordial chaos. But Hubble is reaching its limits, leaving us just on the cusp of peering farther into the unknown. A successor 100 times more powerfulthe James Webb Space Telescopewill launch in 2018 to continue the revolution in astronomy that Hubble began, says NASA astrophysicist and Webb deputy project scientist Amber Straughn.

Join Straughn this evening at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario for a behind-the-scenes look at Webbs immense scientific promiseand the immense technical challenges NASA overcame to build it. In a special presentation that will be broadcast live at 7 P.M. Eastern time on this page, Straughn will explain how Webb will unveil the universes very first stars and galaxies, and how it might even find the first signs of extraterrestrial life on planets beyond our solar system. The talk, A New Era in Astronomy, is part of Perimeters public lecture series presented by BMO Financial. Online viewers can pose questions by tweeting to @Perimeter using the #piLIVE hashtag.

Report Ad

Lee Billings

Lee Billings is an editor at Scientific American covering space and physics.

Credit: Nick Higgins

Report Ad

Biology

3 minutes ago Steve Mirsky and Lydia Chain

Policy & Ethics

2 hours ago David L. Dill

Behavior & Society

0 minute ago Tom Nichols

Behavior & Society

2 hours ago Stephen D. Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam

Biotech

2 hours ago Andrew Joseph and STAT

Climate

0 minute ago Daniel Kammen

See the original post here:

Watch Live Today: The James Webb Space Telescope Will Spark a ... - Scientific American

There may be a large number of undetected giant planet-like bodies in the neighborhood of our Sun, according to a Carnegie-led team of astronomers from Canada, the United States and Chile.

An artists conception of a free-floating planet-like object. Image credit: NASA / JPL.

Similarly-aged stars moving through space together in a group are of great interest to astronomers, because they are considered a prime target to hunt for brown dwarfs and free-floating planetary-mass objects.

Recent studies of the TW Hydrae (TWA) group have revealed some of the first known isolated giant planet-sized objects in the solar neighborhood, roughly 100 light-years away. This group contains a few dozen 10-million-year-old stars, all moving together through space.

Two recent discoveries in particular demonstrate the interest of TWA as a laboratory for understanding this isolated planetary-mass population, said Carnegies astronomer Jonathan Gagn and co-authors.

2MASS J11193254-1137466 and 2MASS J11472421-2040204 are both candidate members of TWA with spectral types L7 that display signs of youth, and with estimated masses as low as 5-7 Jupiter masses. Their close distances to the Sun place them at the nearer side of the TWA spatial distribution.

In order to determine whether or not there are more stand-alone planetary mass-sized objects like these in TWA, the astronomers undertook the calculation of an astronomical measurement called the initial mass function.

This function can be used to determine the distribution of mass in the group and to predict the number of undiscovered objects that might exist inside of it.

The initial mass function of TWA had never been published before, Dr. Gagn noted.

In the process of this analysis, the researchers were able to determine that there are probably many more objects 5-7 times the mass of Jupiter in the association that havent been discovered yet.

A tentative overpopulation of isolated planetary-mass members similar to 2MASS J114724212040204 and 2MASS J111932541137466 is identified, they said.

This indicates that there might be as many as 10+13-5 similar members of TWA with hot-start model-dependent masses estimated at 5-7 Jupiter masses, most of which would be too faint to be detected in the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

TWA extends out to a distance of 250 light-years, but our instruments arent sensitive enough yet to detect giant planets-like members at this distance, hence many of them might remain to be discovered, Dr. Gagn explained.

The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (arXiv.org preprint).

_____

Jonathan Gagn et al. 2017. BANYAN. IX. The Initial Mass Function and Planetary-mass Object Space Density of the TW HYA Association. ApJS 228, 18; doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/228/2/18

Read this article:

Astronomers Hunt for Free-Floating Planetary-Mass Objects in Solar ... - Sci-News.com

Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiters volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. At the image top, over Ios limb, a bluish plume rises about 140 kilometers above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Hunting for habitable exoplanets now may be easier: Cornell University astronomers report that hydrogen pouring from volcanic sources on planets throughout the universe could improve the chances of locating life in the cosmos.

Planets located great distances from stars freeze over. On frozen planets, any potential life would be buried under layers of ice, which would make it really hard to spot with telescopes, said lead author Ramses Ramirez, research associate at Cornells Carl Sagan Institute. But if the surface is warm enough thanks to volcanic hydrogen and atmospheric warming you could have life on the surface, generating a slew of detectable signatures.

Combining the greenhouse warming effect from hydrogen, water and carbon dioxide on planets sprinkled throughout the cosmos, distant stars could expand their habitable zones by 30 to 60 percent, according to this new research. Where we thought you would only find icy wastelands, planets can be nice and warm as long as volcanoes are in view, said Lisa Kaltenegger, Cornell professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute.

Their research, A Volcanic Hydrogen Habitable Zone, is published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The idea that hydrogen can warm a planet is not new, but an Earth-like planet cannot hold onto its hydrogen for more than a few million years. Volcanoes change the concept. You get a nice big warming effect from volcanic hydrogen, which is sustainable as long as the volcanoes are intense enough, said Ramirez, who suggested the possibility that these planets may sustain detectable life on their surface.

A very light gas, hydrogen also puffs up planetary atmospheres, which will likely help scientists detect signs of life. Adding hydrogen to the air of an exoplanet is a good thing if youre an astronomer trying to observe potential life from a telescope or a space mission. It increases your signal, making it easier to spot the makeup of the atmosphere as compared to planets without hydrogen, said Ramirez.

In our solar system, the habitable zone extends to 1.67 times the Earth-Sun distance, just beyond the orbit of Mars. With volcanically sourced hydrogen on planets, this could extend the solar systems habitable zone reach to 2.4 times the Earth-Sun distance about where the asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. This research places a lot of planets that scientists previously thought to be too cold to support detectable life back into play.

We just increased the width of the habitable zone by about half, adding a lot more planets to our search here target list, said Ramirez.

Atmospheric biosignatures, such as methane in combination with ozone indicating life will likely be detected by the forthcoming, next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, or the approaching European Extremely Large Telescope, first light in 2024.

Last week, NASA reported finding seven Earth-like planets around the star Trappist-1. Finding multiple planets in the habitable zone of their host star is a great discovery because it means that there can be even more potentially habitable planets per star than we thought, said Kaltenegger. Finding more rocky planets in the habitable zone per star increases our odds of finding life.

With this latest research, Ramirez and Kaltenegger have possibly added to that number by showing that habitats can be found, even those once thought too cold, as long as volcanoes spew enough hydrogen. Such a volcanic hydrogen habitable zone might just make the Trappist-1 system contain four habitable zone planets, instead of three. Although uncertainties with the orbit of the outermost Trappist-1 planet h means that well have to wait and see on that one, said Kaltenegger.

Go here to see the original:

Volcanic hydrogen spurs chances of finding exoplanet life - Astronomy Now Online

As the Faculty of Arts and Sciences works to address a concerning lack of diversity in the body, some have turned to astronomy professor John A. Johnsons efforts as an example of creating opportunities for historically underrepresented minorities.

Johnson points to his work at the Banneker Institutea program under the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics designed to support students of color studying astronomyas an important step to help welcome students into the field.

But for Johnson, who founded the Banneker Institute, these effort begin with more humble gestures. During nearly every lecture, Johnson says, he tells his students that "no one is born an astrophysicist."

For students of colortraditionally underrepresented in the physical sciencesJohnson says it's an important reminder.

"There are a number of obstacles that a student of color will encounter when they are in a historically white institution like Harvard," Johnson said. "One of the biggest problems is that everyone that they interact with is in a society that constantly sends a message that the intelligence and that the industriousness of black people is less than that of white people."

Working in a field that tends to focus on far-away phenomena, Johnson strives to incorporate issues that hit a little closer to home for many of his students. His classes can vacillate between solar systems and social justice, ultimately acting to promote what Johnson terms a program of anti-racism.

"We are pushing the aspects of society that actively and passively and historically exclude people of color from the enterprise of science," he said.

According to Johnson, the Banneker Institutenamed after African American astronomer Benjamin Bannekeris specifically geared towards students of color who are interested in pursuing graduate degrees in astronomy.

One such student, Juliana Garcia-Mejia 17, said her time at the Banneker Institute last summer gave her a new perspective on navigating academia as an astronomer of color. The institute offers a ten-week summer program for undergraduates from around the country.

According to Garcia-Meija, the institute offered her guidance in both astronomy and navigating social issues like racial discrimination.

Its not as though social justice is a component of Banneker, she said. Social justice is Banneker.

In addition to instruction and research, students at the institutes summer program participate in social justice Fridays, which include a public speaking lesson and discussion of readings, Garcia-Mejia said. Johnson also hosts Sunday dinners for the participants to socialize.

The program is designed to provide students with a standard summer research experience...but it also has a key component where we teach them about race and racism and how that affects the field of astronomy and how that is inevitably going to affect their experience in it, Johnson said.

Involvement with the Banneker Institute extends beyond the summer. Garcia-Mejia said she and the rest of her cohort presented research at a conference in early January, and that the Institute assigned her a graduate student mentor that helped her through the graduate school application process. In addition, she has remained in touch with the students that attended the Institute, many of whom do not attend Harvard.

We support each other to the extent that most of us rely more on that academic network that [the network] at our own institutions, she said.

Johnsons work with mentoring minority students in the sciences has not gone unnoticed. In a presentation about hiring female and minority faculty members at last months faculty meeting, Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser highlighted Johnsons work.

In an interview following the meeting, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith again mentioned Johnson.

In some places the pipeline of candidates coming out of graduate school programs are very strong and if our pools are not reflective of the same demographics, thats an issues for us, and theres a set of actions items that we can take to try and address that, he said. Other places, theres just not enough underrepresented minorities going into this field for graduate school, and then what can we do as an institution to encourage our undergraduates to think about that as an opportunity.

Read more here:

Harvard Astronomer, Institute Offer Support for Students of Color in Sciences - Harvard Crimson

This weekend, people can see a bright star suddenly disappear from the sky before their very eyes, and East Central Community Colleges Engineering Clubs Astronomy Group will hold a star viewing for those interested.

On Saturday evening, March 4, viewers can look to the southwest high in the sky and see the first quarter Moon, and just to the east of it, the bright red star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus. People in the counties served by East Central Community College will see the star suddenly disappear between 9:52 and 9:54 p.m. as the Moon orbits in front of it.

Weather permitting, ECCCs Engineering Clubs Astronomy Group will host a viewing of stars with telescopes on the Decatur campus. The viewing will be held on the south end of the ECCC campus in front of Cross Hall from 9 to 10 p.m. People can watch the Moon get closer to Aldebaran through ECCCs telescope, and to see Aldebaran when it disappears, visitors can bring their own binoculars or telescope, or just watch directly.

View original post here:

ECCC astronomy group hosts star viewing Saturday - Meridian Star

One of the most perplexing phenomena in astronomy has come of age. The fleeting blasts of energetic cosmic radiation of unknown cause, now known asfast radio bursts(FRBs), were first detected a decade ago. At the time, many astronomers dismissed the seemingly random blasts as little more than glitches. And although key facts, such as what causes them, are still largely a mystery, FRBs are now accepted as a genuine class of celestial signal and have spawned a field of their own.

The passage was marked this month by the first major meeting on FRBs, held in Aspen, Colorado, on February 1217. As well as celebrating a fleet of searches for the signals, the meetings 80 delegates grappled with how best to design those hunts and pin down the signals origins and precise distances. The trajectory mirrors that of astronomers 20years ago when they were getting to grips with -ray bursts, which are now a staple of astronomical observation, says Bing Zhang, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The meeting has really focused the field a lot, says Sarah Burke Spolaor, an astronomer at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Debates continue over how to root out detection bias and coordinate observations and on what can be learnt by studying patterns in the existing FRB population.

The first FRB was co-discoveredin 2007 by astronomer Duncan Lorimer at West Virginia University. He found in archived pulsar data a5-millisecond radio frequency burst that was so bright it couldnt be ignored. Astronomers have since seen 25 FRBs. All are brief radio signals, lasting no more than a few thousandths of a second. They seem to come from sources across the sky and beyond our Galaxy. Some last longer than others, and the light from a few is polarized.

A discovery last year caused further excitement. Astronomers reportedthatthey had found a repeating FRB a surprise, because all the other signals had been one-off blips. And in January this year, itsorigin was identified: a faint, distant dwarf galaxy around 780megaparsecs (2.5billion light years) away, in a star-forming region that also hums with a steady radio source.

The repeater has gone some way to focusing the FRB field, says Edo Berger, an astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Astronomers have now observed nearly 200 signals from it; details of 20 have been published. It bolsters the hypothesis that the signals are extragalactic, something most FRB researchers now agree on, and its location is reshaping theories about possible causes.

Dwarf galaxies host fewer stars than most, sotracking an FRB to oneis surprising, says Berger. He thinks that the unusual environment is more than coincidence, and that FRBs may come from super-powerful magnetarsdense, magnetic stars thought to form after an abnormally massive explosion, such as an extremely energetic supernova. Studies suggest that such events seem to be more common in dim dwarf galaxies, he says. Others think the bursts might come from active galactic nuclei, regions at the centres of some galaxies that are thought to host supermassive black holes. Streams of plasma from these could comb nearby pulsars to produce FRBs, says Zhang, which could also explain a recent, although tentative, observation of afaint -ray burstcoinciding with an FRB.

At the meeting, some astronomers proposed reversing the search strategy, and looking for FRBs in similarly strange galaxies, as well as trying to locate the origin of single bursts when they occur. And heated debate arose over whether all FRBs are likely to come from the same kind of source as the repeater, and so whether astronomers might detect repeated signals from all FRBs if they look for long enough. The answer was definitely maybe, says Burke Spolaor. But there could be different kinds of sources, leaving open the question of how much one repeater can teach about FRBs in general, she adds.

A major issue is how to avoid bias. The fact that they were discovered by researchers looking for pulsars small, dense, rotating starscould bias the generation of theories about FRBs: astronomers might be drawn to models involving objects similar to pulsars. Detection bias is also an issue, in part because many FRB searches are piggy-backed onto those that are optimized for finding sources within the Milky Way that repeat regularly, rather than sporadic extragalactic events. The more astronomers look, the more they find FRBs in unexpected locations and with unusual features.

To ensure that astronomers are seeing a representative sample, they need to look for signals across a broader range of frequencies, says Burke Spolaor. They should also pay more attention to the polarization of FRB light, she adds, which can provide clues about the environment of the source.

About 30 telescopes are looking for FRBs, and dedicated searches are increasing. The conference buzzed with excitement about theCanadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a radio telescope in Canada that should start hunting for FRBs later this year and could see as many as a dozen a day.

But observations need to be better coordinated, says Berger. Delegates planned efforts to automatically release FRB results in real time for follow-up by other telescopes, as is already done for other kinds of fleeting astronomical signal.

Although FRBs remain a mystery, the field has surged forward since Lorimeridentified the first burst. The fact that the community now agrees, for instance, that the bursts are extragalactic is a big step forward. Lorimers wife, West Virginia University astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin, initially doubted they were even extraterrestrial, Lorimer told the meeting. The community was quite sharply divided about it, even in our own household. Weve come a long way since then.

This article is reproduced with permission and wasfirst publishedon February 28, 2017.

Read the rest here:

Fast Radio Bursts Are Astronomy's Next Big Thing - Scientific American

Elon Musk has made a very Elon Musk announcement: mentioning, via a Tweet, that SpaceX is going to send two tourists to the Moon and back by the end of next year.

Thats pretty ambitious for a company that hasnt tested its heavy lift rocket yet. But whoever the two people are, theyve already plopped down a deposit on the flight and are training for their mission to where humanity hasnt visited in person since 1972.

Whoever the anonymous duo is, theyll strap into a Dragon 2, be lifted by the Falcon Heavy (which is, no lie, three Falcon 9s strapped together), and fly around the Moon before coming back to Earth. This will all reportedly happen at the end of next year, just a few months after the Dragon 2 was to haul its first occupants to the International Space Station via a contract with NASA.

But the Falcon Heavy has been behind schedule almost since it was announced. The vehicle, three first stages strapped side-by-side with payload sitting on top of the center stage, was announced in 2005 and slated for a 2013 launch once the dust settled, but no launch test has transpired since. Issues with Falcon 9 have set that date back a few times, though a test is reportedly coming in the next few months. In addition, NASA has been preparing for the possibility that the Dragon 2 and its Boeing competitor, the Starliner, may not take ISS occupants up until 2019.

So to you lucky space tourists enjoy your flight next year. Or maybe the year after that. Or, barring that, 2020. Make that 2022.

Read more:

Elon Musk is promising a trip to the Moon next year - Astronomy Magazine

Photo: Carol Kaliff / Carol Kaliff

Mike Murray, farm manager at New Pond Farm in Redding, Conn.

Mike Murray, farm manager at New Pond Farm in Redding, Conn.

Ridgefield Discover Center to host astronomy program at New Pond Farm

RIDGEFIELDThe Discover Center at Ridgefield and the New Pond Farm Observatory will lead an astronomy program Saturday, March 4.

Participants are invited to Astronomy Hill at 7:00 p.m. for a viewing of the moon, galaxy and star clusters, waning winter constellations and nebulae. Before the viewing, there will also be an optional mini-lesson at 6:30 p.m. about what participants might see. Binoculars, a flashlight and warm clothes are encouraged.

Registration for the event is required and can be completed on the Discovery Center website. The program is $4 per person for members, with a cap of $16 per family. Nonmembers will be charged $6 each with a maximum of $24 per family.

See the original post here:

Ridgefield Discover Center to host astronomy program at New Pond Farm - Danbury News Times

Please follow and like us:

An observation unit for Ohio States All-Sky Automated Search for Supernovae uses four lenses. Credit: Courtesy of Krzysztof Stanek

An Ohio State programs ambitious project which attempts to document the entire night sky just got a multimillion-dollar boost.

OSUs All-Sky Automated Search for Supernovae program received a $2.4 million grant to build three new observation units in the next five years. The grant, provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will double the programs number of telescopes from eight to 16 to help ASAS-SN record the entire night sky in real time. The grant will also go toward making all recorded information publicly accessible.

While most space observation programs only record deep space, ASAS-SN is the only project that attempts to record the entire night sky, every night, in order to observe transient cosmic events.

People are surprised when we tell them there isnt another project in astronomy that records the entire sky all the time, said Krzysztof Stanek, a professor of astronomy and ASAS-SNs principal investigator.

The telescopes funded by the grant will be smaller and commercially produced, measuring 14 centimeters in diameter. By utilizing less-powerful telescopes, ASAS-SN can identify cosmic events that would normally be too bright for deep space projects.

Because we have smaller telescopes, we cannot go as deep into space, but we can record anything thats bright, Stanek said. ASAS-SN just tells us there is something going on, then we put much more powerful telescopes on it.

By increasing the number of telescopes and distributing them around the globe, astronomers can record the same coordinates from different locations, regardless of weather conditions. This helps ASAS-SN not miss any significant cosmic events obstructed by clouds, which occasionally happens now.

The primary targets are supernovae, stars more than about 10 times the size of our sun that explode at the end of their lives, said Christopher Kochanek, a professor of astronomy who also works on the project. The rarer things we see are tidal disruption events where the tides of a black hole rip a star apart.

Since its inception in 2014, the program has made several contributions to the scientific community in its identification of hundreds of cosmic events every year. These contributions include the closest example of a supermassive black hole and the most luminous supernova ever recorded, according to the news release announcing the grant.

By making ASAS-SNs data public, the program hopes to inspire scientific inquiry throughout the world.

We have our own set of projects were working on, but we only have so many hours in the day, said Jon Brown, a graduate research assistant studying ASAS-SNs data. One of the benefits of the data being open to the public is that if you add up all the creativity of everyone else, theyre certainly going to come up with an interesting way to use it.

Visit link:

Astronomy program aims sky-high with $2.4m grant - OSU - The Lantern

According to a team of astronomers at the University of Sheffield, UK, stars are ripped apart by supermassive black holes 100 times more often than previously thought.

This artists illustration depicts what astronomers call a tidal disruption event. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

When an unfortunate object, such as a star, wanders too close to a dormant supermassive black hole, the intense gravity of the black hole can destroy the object in whats called a tidal disruption event.

During such an event, some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speeds, while the rest becomes hotter as it falls toward the black hole, generating a distinct flare.

Until now, such stellar cannibalism had only been found in surveys which observed many thousands of galaxies, leading astronomers to believe they were exceptionally rare: only one event every 10,000 to 100,000 years per galaxy.

However, University of Sheffield Professor Clive Tadhunter and co-authors spotted a star being destroyed by a supermassive black hole in a survey of just 15 galaxies.

Each of these 15 galaxies is undergoing a cosmic collision with a neighboring galaxy, said team member Dr. James Mullaney.

Our surprising findings show that the rate of tidal disruption events dramatically increases when galaxies collide.

This is likely due to the fact that the collisions lead to large numbers of stars being formed close to the central supermassive black holes in the two galaxies as they merge together.

The astronomers first observed their sample of 15 colliding galaxies in 2005, during a previous project.

However, when they observed the same sample again in 2015, they noticed that one galaxy the ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) F01004-2237 appeared strikingly different.

They found that in 2010, the brightness of this galaxy flared dramatically.

The particular combination of variability and post-flare spectrum observed in ULIRG F01004-2237 which is 1.7 billion light years from Earth was unlike any known supernova or active galactic nucleus, but characteristic of tidal disruption events.

Based on our results for ULIRG F01004-2237, we expect that tidal disruption events will become common in our own Milky Way Galaxy when it eventually merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in about 5 billion years, Prof. Tadhunter said.

Looking towards the center of the Milky Way at the time of the merger wed see a flare approximately every 10 to 100 years.

The flares would be visible to the naked eye and appear much brighter than any other star or planet in the night sky.

The teams findings were published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy (arXiv.org preprint).

_____

C. Tadhunter et al. A tidal disruption event in the nearby ultra-luminous infrared galaxy F01004-2237. Nature Astronomy, published online February 27, 2017; doi: 10.1038/s41550-017-0061

Read the rest here:

Tidal Disruption Events Occur More Frequently than Thought - Sci-News.com

[Artwork depicting a Falcon Heavy night launch. Credit: SpaceX]

Yesterday, the private rocket company SpaceX announced that it plans to send two humans in a flight around the Moon in late 2018.

The announcement says that the company was approached by two people -- referred to only as private citizens -- who put down a significant deposit on a rocket flight. The flight would not land on the Moon, but instead go on a path around the Moon and then return back to Earth, taking about a week total.

The big question is: Can they do it?

The answer to that question is,yes, they can. But a whole lot has to happen between now and then.

First, the capsule has to be tested and crew rated. Theyll be using the Dragon 2, an upgraded version of the Dragon capsule theyve been flying for a few years now. The D2 is larger, designed to carry humans, and has a lot of new hardware on it. Its never been flown, but should be tested later this year on an uncrewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of NASAs Commercial Crew Program. Itll fly on a Falcon 9 rocket for that mission.

[Edited toadd (Feb. 28, 2017 at 16:00 UTC): I implied this but should've been more clear here: SpaceX has not yet launched a crewed mission; that is, a flight with humans on board. That is a major, major milestone and one they hope to pass sometime in 2018. Of all of these steps, this may be the most important before this translunar flight can be made.]

The second big piece of this is the rocket. For that theyll need the Falcon Heavy, a huge booster thats like three Falcon 9s strapped together. A single Falcon 9 doesnt have anywhere near the lift capability to send two humans and supplies around the Moon, but the Heavy will have 5 million pounds of thrust; 2/3rds the power of a Saturn V (which had to launch heavier equipment to the Moon) and far more than any other rocket currently in use. Itll have lift capability to spare.

However, like the capsule, the Falcon Heavy has not yet flown. The hardware has been in production for some time (I saw pieces of it myself when I toured the SpaceX factory in 2015 and again in late 2016), but a full up test of the rocket isnt planned until later this year, as well.

If I sound cautious here, its because I am. SpaceX has done some amazing things, and has even shown a lot of resilience and flexibility that is difficult in big space agencies; theyve had two Falcon 9 failures but have diagnosed the problems and apparently fixed them rapidly. The successful flight of a Falcon 9 with a Dragon to the ISS a week ago shows they have what it takes to be successful after big setbacks.

But there are issues. The company is behind schedule on many aspects of their launches (due to internal and external factors like NASA funding issues, loss of vehicles, and so on), and it should be stressed that both key technologies (rocket and capsule) havent flown yet. Once those are successfully tested, Ill be much more confident this mission will happen and will happen on time.

The announcement, itself, has few details, which Im guessing is not an accident. Im sure theyre waiting until they have more things nailed down before releasing more information. For example, it doesnt actually specify how many people will be on the mission; at least the two private citizens, but will there be other trained astronauts? In a phone call with reporters, Musk said theyll be using a fully autonomous Dragon capsule, which wont need trained pilots. That strikes me as risky, but Ill need a lot more information before I make up my mind on that. Musk noted there is risk in the flight.

As for science and mission-related activities, none were mentioned (they said theyll be conducting health and fitness tests, but thats for the citizen astronauts prior to the launch). Musk did say it will go well past the Moon, making at least one close pass before heading back to Earth.

The actual cost wasnt mentioned, either. On their site, SpaceX says a Heavy launch is $90 million. But thats just the launch; its not clear what the total cost of this mission will be, nor how much the two people paid. In the phone call, Musk said it will cost more than a mission to ISS, so itll be in the $300 million range. Whoever these two unnamed space tourists are, they clearly have a lot of liquid cash.

This reminds me a bit of Elon Musks grand Mars announcement from 2016; there were few details then, either. But that was more of a splashy attention-grabbing event, while this is clearly more of a heres the next big thing we really are going to attempt to do soon announcement.

Pending further details, Ill say I like this idea. If it works, itll have a huge positive benefit to both SpaceX and space exploration. Itll put cash in the companys coffers, which they need; launching rockets is an expensive business (Musk sad they can do a couple of these flights a year, which could supply 10-20% of their annual revenue). The publicity wont hurt, either.

And I rather like the prospects for public awareness of space exploration here, too. When SpaceX launches a rocket, people pay more attention to the booster landing than they do to the primary mission. Thats not surprising; even after eight successful landings, watching them is still like watching a science fiction movie. Its amazing.

So, putting two (or more) people on top of such a gigantic rocket and flinging them around the Moon will be something that will catch the attention of the world. Mind you, several countries have announced plans to go to the Moon, as well, but its not clear who will do it first and who will land first. Having a private company do it before anyone else does will be quite the feather for Musks hat.

The last time any human went to the Moon was in late 1972 for Apollo 17. No one has seen it up close with their own eyes for 45 years. Im excited about the prospect of this happening again next year. But Ill mitigate that with the reality of what needs to be done first.

Theres a reason we compare very difficult things to rocket science. This is rocket science, and theres much work ahead of SpaceX. May the solar wind be at their back.

Read this article:

SpaceX announces it will send two 'private citizens' around the Moon in 2018 - Blastr

Artists concept of planets and debris orbiting a double star system. Credit: UCL

Evidence of planetary debris surrounding a double sun, Tatooine-like system has been found for the first time by a UCL-led team of researchers.

Published today in Nature Astronomy and funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Research Council, the study reports on the remains of shattered asteroids orbiting a double sun consisting of a white dwarf and a brown dwarf roughly 1000 light-years away in a system called SDSS 1557.

The discovery is remarkable because the debris appears to be rocky and suggests that terrestrial planets like Tatooine Luke Skywalkers home world in Star Wars might exist in the system. To date, all exoplanets discovered in orbit around double stars are gas giants, similar to Jupiter, and are thought to form in the icy regions of their systems.

In contrast to the carbon-rich icy material found in other double star systems, the planetary material identified in the SDSS 1557 system has a high metal content, including silicon and magnesium. These elements were identified as the debris flowed from its orbit onto the surface of the star, polluting it temporarily with at least 10^17 g (or 1.1 trillion US tons) of matter, equating it to an asteroid at least 4 km in size.

Lead author, Dr. Jay Farihi (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: Building rocky planets around two suns is a challenge because the gravity of both stars can push and pull tremendously, preventing bits of rock and dust from sticking together and growing into full-fledged planets. With the discovery of asteroid debris in the SDSS 1557 system, we see clear signatures of rocky planet assembly via large asteroids that formed, helping us understand how rocky exoplanets are made in double star systems.

In the solar system, the asteroid belt contains the leftover building blocks for the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, so planetary scientists study the asteroids to gain a better understanding of how rocky, and potentially habitable planets are formed. The same approach was used by the team to study the SDSS 1557 system as any planets within it cannot yet be detected directly but the debris is spread in a large belt around the double stars, which is a much larger target for analysis.

The discovery came as a complete surprise as the team assumed the dusty white dwarf was a single star but co-author Dr. Steven Parsons (University of Valparaso and University of Sheffield), an expert in double star (or binary) systems noticed the telltale signs. We know of thousands of binaries similar to SDSS 1557 but this is the first time weve seen asteroid debris and pollution. The brown dwarf was effectively hidden by the dust until we looked with the right instrument, added Parsons, but when we observed SDSS 1557 in detail we recognised the brown dwarfs subtle gravitational pull on the white dwarf.

The team studied the binary system and the chemical composition of the debris by measuring the absorption of different wavelengths of light or spectra, using the Gemini Observatory South telescope and the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope, both located in Chile.

Co-author Professor Boris Gnsicke (University of Warwick) analysed these data and found they all told a consistent and compelling story. Any metals we see in the white dwarf will disappear within a few weeks, and sink down into the interior, unless the debris is continuously flowing onto the star. Well be looking at SDSS 1557 next with Hubble, to conclusively show the dust is made of rock rather than ice.

See the rest here:

First evidence of rocky planet formation in Tatooine system - Astronomy Now Online

A prototype space-based gravitational wave detector performed far better than expected during its trial run, raising prospects that a follow-on observatory to listen for echoes from the biggest crashes in the cosmos will be launched ahead of schedule.

LISA Pathfinder, which has been in orbit for a little more than a year, was intended to test if two small cubes could be kept in an extremely steady and measurable state of free fall. If successful, scientists could use the technique to detect ripples in space, a phenomenon first envisioned by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

The ripples, which are called gravitational waves, occur due to massive objects, such as black holes and neutron stars, warping the fabric of spacetime as they move. The first detection of gravitational waves was made last year with the ground-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO.

Putting a system in space would give astronomers a way to detect ripples that oscillate over hours instead of in fractions of seconds, such as the gravitational waves detected by the twin LIGO observatories.

The waves LIGO detected were caused by two black holes, each about 30 times more massive than the sun, colliding to become a single larger black hole more than 1.3 billion light years away.

RELATED: A Rapidly Spinning Black Hole Was Seen Killing a Distant Star

The space-based LISA observatory, by comparison, would be able to detect black holes one million times more massive than the sun that date back to the dawn of the universe.

"It's a different astronomy and very, very rich," astrophysicist Stefano Vitale, with the University of Trento in Italy, told reporters at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

For LISA to work, the space buoys have to be kept at a level of quiescence equal to one-millionth of one-billionth of the force of Earth's gravity, said Vitale, the lead scientist for LISA Pathfinder.

The goal of the demonstration mission was to get within 10 percent of that mark. To save money, LISA Pathfinder suspends two cubes within one spacecraft, which contributes additional forces. A laser keeps tabs on the distance between the cubes.

The operational LISA would use three satellites, formation flying in a triangle more than 620,000 miles apart and tracked by lasers, to detect gravitational waves.

RELATED: Our Supermassive Black Hole Could Be 'Supercharging' Stars' Magnetism

LISA Pathfinder ended up far exceeding expectations.

"We have done better than the requirement for LISA," Vitale said. "This is a final green light for LISA."

Originally targeted for launch in 2031, scientists are now looking at launching two years earlier, Vitale said.

By then, LISA should have many terrestrial counterparts. The two LIGO detectors are in the process of being upgraded and will be joined this year by a third gravitational wave detector, called Virgo, in Italy.

With three detectors, scientists can triangulate an observation and home in on the location.

For example, If Virgo had been operational when LIGO made its first gravitational wave detection, scientists would have been able to determine where the black holes crashed to within 10 square degrees instead of 600 square degrees, said astrophysicist Gabriela Gonzalez, with Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

In 2020, Japan expects to open its Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector, KAGRA, which is being built more than 650 feet underground in Kamioka, northwest of Tokyo. A fourth detector in India is aiming for a 2024 debut.

Top photo: The collision of two black holes holes a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO is seen in this still from a computer simulation.

WATCH: Do Black Holes Ever Die?

Read the original post:

We're on the Verge of a Gravitational Wave Astronomy Boom - Seeker

A pair of binary stars, marked SDSS 1557, have evidence of a rocky planet. Theyre calling it a Tatooine system. The truth is weirder than that.

Both of the two stars in the system are not quite stars. One is a white dwarf, the remnants of a Sun-like star after it exhausts its hydrogen reserves and becomes an Earth-sized husk of white, hot, dense fury. The other is a brown dwarf, a large object that forms like a star, but ultimately fails to ignite and begin fusing hydrogen into helium. They often fall short of the mass of a small star, but are far more massive than gas giants (usually a minimum of 10 times the mass of Jupiter).

The white dwarf seems to be eating rocky asteroids trailing off from a belt and eventually falling into the dense white dwarf. The asteroids appear to be made of mostly metals rather than ice and lighter minerals, which points to the formation of rocky planets at some point in the systems past.

They still may be hiding there today, but there could be a giant impediment to finding them: the brown dwarf. The object was hiding in the results, as brown dwarfs give off little light, but its mass gives the white dwarf a noticeable tug.

The brown dwarf was effectively hidden by the dust until we looked with the right instrument, Steven Parsons of University of Valparaso and University of Sheffield and a coauthor on the paper said in a press release, but when we observed SDSS 1557 in detail we recognised the brown dwarfs subtle gravitational pull on the white dwarf.

The study was published in Nature Astronomy.

Go here to read the rest:

Astronomers find evidence of rocky planets around a dead star and a failed one - Astronomy Magazine

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project. Acknowledgement: UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza Universit di Roma; E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy

Stars are bursting into life all over this image from ESAs Herschel space observatory. It depicts the giant molecular cloud RCW106, a massive billow of gas and dust almost 12,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma, the Carpenters Square.

Cosmic dust, a minor but crucial ingredient in the interstellar material that pervades our Milky Way galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths. By tracing the glow of dust with the infrared eye of Herschel, astronomers can explore stellar nurseries in great detail.

Sprinkled across the image are dense concentrations of the interstellar mixture of gas and dust where stars are being born. The brightest portions, with a blue hue, are being heated by the powerful light from newborn stars within them, while the redder regions are cooler.

The delicate shapes visible throughout the image are the result of radiation and mighty winds from the young stars carving bubbles and other cavities in the surrounding interstellar material.

Out of the various bright, blue regions, the one furthest to the left is known as G333.6-0.2 and is one of the most luminous portions of the infrared sky. It owes its brightness to a stellar cluster, home to at least a dozen young and very bright stars that are heating up the gas and dust around them.

Elongated and thin structures, or filaments, stand out in the tangle of gas and dust, tracing the densest portions of this star-forming cloud. It is largely along these filaments, dotted with many bright, compact cores, that new stars are taking shape.

Launched in 2009, Herschel observed the sky at far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths for almost four years. Scanning the Milky Way with its infrared eye, Herschel has revealed an enormous number of filamentary structures, highlighting their universal presence throughout the Galaxy and their role as preferred locations for stellar birth.

This three-colour image combines Herschel observations at 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 250 microns (red), and spans over 1 on the long side; north is up and east to the left. The image was obtained as part of Herschels Hi-GAL key-project, which imaged the entire plane of the Milky Way in five different infrared bands. Avideo panoramacompiling all Hi-GAL observations was published in April 2016.

Go here to read the rest:

Star formation on filaments in RCW106 - Astronomy Now Online

Physically and visually impaired children and youngsters in Delhi, Ludhiana and Chennai will get an opportunity to learn various aspects of astronomy as part of the National Science Day celebrations in the country, New Delhi-based Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) organisation said on Monday.

National Science Day is celebrated on 28 February to commemorate the discovery of Raman Effect in 1928 by Indian physicist and Nobel Laureate Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman in India.

In accordance with this years theme Science and technology for specially-abled persons SPACE will take skill development classes air rocket construction and launching, weigh yourself on different planets, catch the meteors, ring the planet, astronaut can you be one, take a picture as an astronaut and dress as an alien and astronaut, the organisation said in a statement on Monday.

Children and youngsters from the Asthavakra School, Rohini; Sparsh Foundation, Kalyan Vihar and Model Town in Delhi; Nirdosh School, Sarbha Nagar in Ludhiana and Sankalp-Open School and Learning Centre in Chennai, will participate in the initiative by SPACE.

The organisation also conducts various science related activities with public, school and college students and have successfully organised various programmes such as Astronomy fairs and competitions with the objective to create enthusiasm among people and to inculcate scientific temper among the masses.

Tags: astronomy, ISRO, National Science Day, Raman effect, Space

Go here to see the original:

SPACE organisation to help specially-abled children learn about astronomy - Tech2

The Southern Cross Astronomical Society recently dedicated its observatory in Homestead, just west of Miami, in honor of Matthew Tippy DAuria and his wife Pat, of Marion Oaks.

Some people are named after relatives, celebrities, famous singers/musicians or sports figures. And sometimes venues are named after people.

The latter is the case with Matthew Tippy DAuria of Marion Oaks, to whom the Southern Cross Astronomical Society recently dedicated its observatory in Homestead, just west of Miami.

During a ceremony Jan. 28, the society named their new observatory The DAuria Observatory. DAuria, a former resident of Miami, attended the dedication with his wife, Pat. He said he wanted just his last name used on the observatory, So my wife would get credit too.

The plaque of dedication includes the names Tippy and Patricia DAuria. It also reads: Florida amateur astronomer Tippy DAuria (born 1935) is founder of the Winter Star Party. For many years he has worked to encourage both beginning and advanced sky-watchers in the hobby.

The Winter Star Party is not political, but is, in fact, a party. DAuria and Pat started the event in 1985, as an astronomers convention.

Its a gathering of astronomers, he said.

The event is usually held each year in February, in Scout Key in the Florida Keys. As an offshoot of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society, it is attended by astronomy buffs from all over. There are classes and lectures during the day. Attendees bring their own telescopes for sky-viewing at night.

This year's event began Feb. 20 and ended Sunday, according to http://scas.org/winter-star-party.

DAuria has dedicated himself to educating the public about all he has studied and learned about the cosmos. He has been involved with astronomy since 1980. That was the same year he joined the Southern Cross Astronomical Society. He served as vice president of the society for 15 years and now is a life member of the group. He also is currently a board member of the Astronomy Outreach Network.

More than 100 people attended the recent observatory naming ceremony, which was presided over by Mike Reynolds. He was the executive director emeritus of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, from 1991 to 2003. When he retired, center officials named the main observatory The Michael D. Reynolds Observatory in his honor. Reynolds currently is professor of astronomy at Florida State College in Jacksonville and executive director of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers.

Tippy has been a leader in astronomy outreach for over three decades. Tippy loves to share the night skies with others. These celestial treasures inspired him, so he passes that on, Reynolds said, citing reasons DAuria was chosen for the honor.

The observatory is not the first time something has been named in honor of D'Auria. In 1998, he had an asteroid named after him: Asteroid 11378 DAuria.

Before his interest in astronomy, DAuria served from 1954 to 1958 as an electricians mate aboard a diesel attack submarine, the USS Trumpetfish 55425. He attended sub school in New London, Connecticut, and earned his dolphins, similar to a pilots wings. From a starting class of 50 students, only 22 made it to graduation.

I would recommend that anybody who wants to try the submarine service do so. If its not suited for you, youll find out long before you go to sea on a submarine, DAuria said.

He remembers going topside in the North Atlantic and becoming somewhat star struck: There were so many stars, it was like black velvet with diamond dust scattered all over the sky, he said.

DAuria was hired in 1992 at Miami-Dade Community College in Miami as an instrumentation technician, at the same time he was working on earning two degrees. In 1997, he obtained an Associate of Science in electrical engineering and, in 2000, an AS in computer integrated manufacturing. He also taught creative photography and darkroom techniques, and introduction to electronics and DC circuit theory at Miami-Dade.

DAurias interests also include volcanoes. In 2001, he led a National Geographic sponsored expedition to study volcanoes in Costa Rica. His subject was the moons gravitational pull on magma chambers in volcanoes.

This helped predict volcanic eruptions, based on positions of the moon, he said.

Parade magazine featured his photo and a cover story in the March 14, 1999, issue.

D'Auria also is affiliated with the Deep Sky Observers, Institute for Planetary Research Observatories, Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers and the Astronomy League. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker on astronomy at universities, high schools, star parties, civic groups and astronomy clubs. He often is invited to state and national parks to share his knowledge. He said he is not a fan of science fiction novels or films because, Theyre too far fetched.

The nickname Tippy comes from when D-Auria was a toddler and cut his feet walking on broken glass from a dropped baby bottle. He walked "tippy" as a result and his father started calling him tippy toes.

DAuria married Pat in 1980. After retiring in 2006, they visited Ocala on vacation and liked it so much they bought a home here. The house is spacious and his many awards and citations of recognition line the walls and his office, along with deep sky photographs.

A large framed photograph of Hollywoods famed Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, shown playing pool), looks out on one room with a pool table in the center.

Pat D'Auria loves to quote one of her husbands favorite slogans: Theres no sense in retiring if you dont have a pool table!

Read the original here:

Society names new observatory for Marion Oaks astronomer - Ocala