Category Archives: Astronomy

Laniakea Supercluster superimposed on orbits and surfaces of mass density. Credit: University of Hawaii

Everything in our universe moves, but the timescales needed to see motion are often vastly greater than human lifetimes. In a major new study, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Maryland and University of Paris-Saclay has traced the movement of 10,000 galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the dominant congregations of matter, within 350 million light-years. Their motions are followed throughout a span of 11.5 billion years from the galaxies origins when the universe was only 1.5 billion-years-old, until today, at an age of more than 13 billion years.

The study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Using a mathematical technique called numerical action method, the team has computed these paths based on the present brightness and positions of galaxies, and their present motion away from us. The astronomers have factored in the physics of the Big Bang theory, including the idea that galaxies initially start out expanding from each other almost precisely at what is called the Hubble expansion rate. Throughout time, gravity alters galaxy motions, so they are not just moving apart as the universe expands, but are drawn together into filaments, walls and clusters, while also emptying out other regions that are now voids. Over the eons of time, galaxies typically deviate from pure Hubble rate expansion by millions of light-years over a billion years. In regions of high density, the galaxy orbits can become quite complicated and involve collisions and mergers.

Slice of local universe showing orbits that galaxies have followed in white and contours of regions of high density in shades of yellow-orange. Milky Way (near center) Great Attractor core of Laniakea Supercluster (left) Perseus-Pisces (right). Credit: University of Hawaii

We are bringing into focus the detailed formation history of large-scale mass structures in the universe by reverse engineering the gravitational interactions that created them, said Ed Shaya, Associate Research Scientist at the University of Maryland.

There are several particularly interesting vast regions of high matter and galaxy density the astronomers explore. One, which has been called the Great Attractor, is the core of the Laniakea Supercluster, an immense supercluster of galaxies containing our own Milky Way. Galaxies can be seen flowing toward a location within a nest of four rich clusters.

Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Thomas Ciszewski

A second fascinating region is in the adjacent Perseus-Pisces filament of galaxies, which stretches for nearly a billion light-years and is one of the largest known structures in the universe. The vicinity of the Virgo Cluster, the closest large cluster, is also seen, and can be studied in detail because it is nearby.

For more than 30 years, astronomers have considered a Great Attractor to be the primary source of gravity that makes the whole region near us move with a high peculiar velocity relative to uniform cosmic expansion, but the nature of that source has been obscure, said R. Brent Tully, an astronomer at IfA who co-authored the study. Our orbit reconstructions have provided the first good look at this previously enigmatic region.

Across the entire expanse, the orbits can be projected into the future as well. The accelerating expansion of the universe dominates the overall picture, causing most galaxies to move apart. However, some coalescence and merging will continue in localized regions.

A video of the paths of galaxies in this vast region, starting from the epoch of early galaxy formation and continuing until the universe is almost twice as old can be viewed here. On the large scales depicted in this simulation, only a few major mergers, all in very dense regions, are seen to occur in the next 10 billion years.

The technical article is accompanied by four interactive models. and four videos:

Reference: Galaxy flows within 8,000 km/s from Numerical Action methods by Edward Shaya, R. Brent Tully, Daniel Pomarde and Alan Peel, Accepted, The Astrophysical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac4f66arXiv:2201.12315

The research team is composed of Shaya (University of Maryland), Tully (University of Hawaii), Daniel Pomarede (University of Paris-Saclay) and Alan Peel (University of Maryland).

Read more from the original source:

Astronomers Trace the Movement of 10,000 Galaxies Over the Last 11.5 Billion Years - SciTechDaily

When a massive star dies at the end of its life, the core collapses to form either a very dense neutron star or a black hole. At the same time, the outer layers of the star are explosively launched into space by the colossal energy generated in the core collapse. The blast wave is so powerful that the expanding debris lights up with as much energy as billions upon billions of times the energy emitted by the Sun, and in fact can outshine an entire galaxy.

A supernova is born. But not all supernovae are created equal.

Some are far more powerful than others. The description above is ridiculously oversimplified here's a somewhat more detail explanation, and more technical ones can easily be found online and changing conditions from star to star can change the way one explodes. It can depend on things like having a binary star companion or not, the mass of the star when it explodes, the mass it had when it was born, how much of its outer layers blow off before the explosion, and more.

Still, there are supernovae that are exceptional even in this bewildering variety of explosions, and they can be very hard to explain. One in particular stands out, and astronomers think they can now explain what happened.

On June 16, 2018, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System detected a supernova in a galaxy roughly 200 million light years away. The naming convention for these events dubbed it AT2018cow, and because astronomers are dorks just like everyone else it was known thereafter as the COW.

Other observatories were alerted and started watching it as well, and as the data came in astronomers were surprised to see just how luminous this explosion was 100 billion times brighter than the Sun! This puts it in the rare class of superluminous supernovae, ones which are far more powerful than average.

But it also acted weirdly. It rose in brightness much faster than usual as well. Most supernovae take about two weeks before hitting peak luminosity, but this one rose in brightness by a factor of 100 in a single day. It also faded much more rapidly than typical supernovae as well. The COW's color in early days was blue, so this new type of event was called a Fast Blue Optical Transient, or FBOT. I wrote a synopsis of all this not long after it happened, if you want the details.

In the years since there has been a lot of work trying to figure out how to make a star explode like this, with limited success. Ideas have included the birth of a super-magnetized neutron star called a magnetar, or a white dwarf torn apart by a black hole (!!), and more. But now a team of astronomers thinks they have the answer (link to paper).

Sometimes, in the millennia or even years before the final explosion, massive stars can blow a lot of their outer layers away. Sometimes it's slow Betelgeuse, for example, blows out a slow dense wind of matter and sometimes it's more violent. This material surrounds the pre-supernova star so it's called the circumstellar matter.

We have physical models for how the interiors of such stars behave, equations that can be solved to understand what's happening deep inside a star. These can then be used to see what happens when the star explodes, and try to match the energies emitted to what's actually observed.

The astronomers modeled the COW as a very massive star, one born with a whopping 80 times the mass of the Sun. That's huge, and it's very rare for stars to get this big. Such a star loses much of its hydrogen outer layers during its life, blowing them away to great distance.

What's left is a still-crushingly-hefty core 42 times the Sun's mass that's mostly helium. At this point the star's core is fusing ever-heavier elements in its very center, layered like an onion. Some of that helium on the surface is blown into space as well, and the best model fit to the observations indicates about half a solar mass was surrounding the core when it blew up. That's less than in some cases, but still about 150,000 times the mass of the Earth.

The core is so massive a very bad thing happened deep inside it. When it started fusing oxygen into silicon the reaction is so energetic it produces super-high-energy gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. These gamma rays in part support the core against its own immense gravity, heating the interior enough to keep it inflated.

But gamma rays at these energies are unstable. They can spontaneously convert themselves into matter, an electron and anti-electron, a process called pair production. This steals away energy supporting the core, so gravity squeezes it, making it smaller. The temperature goes up, the core expands a bit, and finds equilibrium again. Until, that is, gamma rays start converting again, and the process repeats. This causes the core to pulsate, which helps it blow material off its surface.

At this point its life can now be measured in days, maybe weeks. Helium blows off its surface, and the pulsations get bigger and bigger, until finally as it always does in the end gravity wins. The core collapses, the temperature screams way up, and it explodes.

The total energy released in just a few days is truly staggering, as much as the Sun gives off over its entire 10 billion year lifetime. The blast wave from this titanic explosion slams into the previously ejected helium, lighting it up. If there had been a lot of this material around the star, more than the mass of the Sun, it would've taken many days to light it up and even longer for it to fade. But because it was only half a solar mass it brightened and faded rapidly.

The astronomers find that their model reproduces that rapid change in brightness of the first 20 days of the supernova pretty well. After that, the usual sort of supernova models work, with about 0.6 solar masses of radioactive nickel created in the nuclear furnace decaying into cobalt, generating so much light it explains the supernova's brightness thereafter.

Interestingly, they find that the total energy of the explosion doesn't affect the brightness over time what astronomers call a light curve very much at all, but what really dominates here is the material around the star, its shape, and its density. That's the key to understanding these fast supernovae.

For truly massive stars, over 100 times the mass of the Sun, the core explosion is so violent it tears itself apart completely, leaving nothing behind. In this case it may have left a black hole or a magnetar, and material falling back on this object may explain the brightness many weeks after the explosion. But the first few weeks are dominated by the circumstellar matter.

Now that these models exist it'll be interesting to see how they apply to any future such FBOT supernovae. Fitting a specific case is one thing, but generalizing it to be able to explain others is a strong indication that they're doing something right.

See the article here:

Bad Astronomy | The supernova AT2018cow may finally be explained | SYFY WIRE - SYFY WIRE

One of the girls asked Mitchell if she might enroll in the school. Raised like most Quakers to oppose slavery, Mitchell knew that recently debate had raged in Nantuckets white community about the radical notion of integrating the islands public school. Slavery had been banned in Massachusetts since the 1780s, but government, business, and education carefully kept free Black people on the lowest rung of the social ladder. When she met the girls hopeful gazes and told them yes, they could enroll, Mitchell knew that uproar might follow.

Mitchell was just 17 then, but she would go on to be the first female astronomer in the United States and one of the first in the world. Part of what Maria Mitchell did, says astrophysicist and University of New Hampshire assistant professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, was give us a model of a community-engaged astronomer. She never thought she should just shut up and calculate. Mitchell was principled in her views and not timid about sharing them. She had a sense of responsibility to the broader community, from the importance of educating Black girls during a time of intense segregation to her subsequent persistent advocacy for women in science.

Today, 133 years after her death, Mitchells legacy continues in institutions such as the Maria Mitchell Observatory on her native Nantucket, where director Regina Jorgenson conducts research on galaxy formation and directs an outreach program targeting students from underserved communities. Maria Mitchell was very much ahead of her time, Jorgenson says. Learning by doing was her foundational philosophy. While this is fairly common pedagogical practice today, it was not at all at that time.

The observatorys research program, once women-only, is now mixed-gender but still women-dominated. Which, adds Jorgenson, is extremely unusual, if not unique, in American astrophysics. One in 20 female astronomers in the country has passed through the observatory in some fashion, creating a community of women tied together by the legacy of Maria Mitchell.

White society was not torpedoed by the education of three Black girls, it turned out, and Mitchell soon moved to other fields. She did not attend college (few colleges accepted women at that time), but within a year, she was hired as librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum. Many cities boasted an athenaeum (named for Athena, the Olympian goddess of wisdom), a combination of a subscription library, nexus of important periodicals, and lecture venue. (Many, such as Nantuckets and Bostons, still flourish.) Mitchell worked there for two decades. She spent spare hours devouring books and periodicals about astronomy and mathematics, while teaching herself French and German.

William Mitchell, her father, held many jobs over the years, from clerk of the Nantucket Society of Friends to banker, schoolmaster, and legislator. He even set chronometers for whaling captains who required an accurate timepiece for determining longitude. But the constant for him and his family was astronomy.

His daughters talents in this field were recognized early. Beginning in childhood as her fathers assistant, Maria grew ever more adept as an astronomer which flowered into her great passion in life. By the age of 12 she was charting eclipses from the awkward little platform perched astride their steep roof.

When William was hired in 1836 as director of Pacific Bank, the job included a spacious penthouse apartment above the bank. Its flat slate roof made it easier for him and his daughter to build another observatory. For the next 11 years, she peered at the sky on most clear nights.

She had been precisely monitoring successive quadrants of the sky for years when, on October 1, 1847, the Mitchells hosted a party. It was a clear and cool night. After tea she said to the guests and her family, Now, you must excuse me. The heavens are so clear I want to sweep the skies. Who knows what comets may be roaming at large?

Maria donned a coat and climbed up to the roof. She peered yet again at a familiar corner of the sky but this time she saw something new. She went downstairs and told her father what she thought she had found.

Soon partygoers heard William race downstairs from the roof. With his observing cap still pulled low over his eyes, he tore open the parlor door and exclaimed, Maria has found a telescopic comet!

He wrote immediately to various authorities to establish her priority. Soon the director of the US Coast Survey was writing, We congratulate the indefatigable comet seeker most heartily on her success; is she not the first lady who has ever discovered a comet?

She was not, but it was a rare achievement nonetheless. For millennia, these visitors to the night sky had been regarded as celestial omens, and this one bode well for Maria Mitchell. Soon popularly called Miss Mitchells Comet (now designated C/1847 T1), it is not a periodic visitor to the solar system, unlike the comets Halley or Hale-Bopp.

At 30, Mitchell began to receive the scientific accolades that would continue for the rest of her life. She was the first American astronomer to discover a comet. Soon Mitchell became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later to most of the previously all-male institutions, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She became quite famous, publicly supporting feminism and abolition when it would have been easier to not do so. When Frederick Douglass first spoke to a large mixed-race audience on Nantucket in 1841, she was present, and her work was honored at the Seneca Falls Womans Rights Convention in 1848.

When Vassar College opened its doors in 1865, Mitchell was there as its first professor of astronomy (paid considerably less than her male colleagues). She was 47 and among the first generation of astronomers who were also college professors a marriage of commitments that left her exhausted.

She was hugely popular with students even revered. They helped her chart sunspots and eclipses. We are women studying together, she would say to launch a class. She objected to numerical grading but gave rigorous math tests. Astronomy is not stargazing, she insisted. The laws which govern the motions of the sun, the earth, planets, and other bodies in the universe cannot be understood and demonstrated without a solid basis of mathematical learning.

And Mitchell treated her students as serious scholars. One student wrote of her time at Vassar: I have Miss Mitchell and all these grand instruments and no one here makes fun of it at all. But when I go home no one there will take any interest in astronomy. Do you think I shall be brave enough then to hold on tight to what I have begun?

Mitchell died in 1889. In 1935, a century after she opened that school for girls, her admiring colleagues in the field named a lunar crater after her.

Thirteen years after Mitchells death, Nantucketers formed the Maria Mitchell Association to preserve her legacy as a scientist and teacher, which was meant, in part, to help female students study astronomy and hold on tight to what they began. Now the association operates two observatories, a museum at the original Mitchell home on Vestal Street where Maria and her father observed the constellations from their roof and an aquarium, providing many programs for scientists and the public.

Regina Jorgenson has been director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory since 2016. She began her career with a fellowship that enabled her to travel around the world and meet with women in astronomy to research the effect of different cultures on womens potential in science. This is a unique position for an astronomer, because it is not at an academic institute. It combines the three things I love: research, working with students, and doing public outreach.

Under Jorgensons leadership, the observatory focuses on mentoring underrepresented groups at crucial stages in their careers. Thus, the array of students and speakers is quite different than in Mitchells time. Prescod-Weinstein, who gave a lecture for the Maria Mitchell Association last July on her research into dark matter, writes about astronomy and physics within the context of her experience as a Black woman who is also agender, representing an intersection of groups that for centuries have deliberately been excluded from science.

Prescod-Weinstein says that her night sky looks very different from Maria Mitchells. Mitchell was born in 1818, before the adoption of trains, telegraphy, even photography. She could watch for comets from atop a bank in bustling downtown Nantucket. Prescod-Weinstein was born in smoggy Los Angeles, 164 years after Mitchell and after an industrial revolution accelerated climate change. My concept of the night sky was that at night it turned orange, because you were seeing the sodium lights reflected in the sky. She could scarcely see any stars.

Prescod-Weinstein is now an astrophysicist, and an assistant professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire. Her primary research is in the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology (the science of the origin and development of the universe). She writes a monthly column, Field Notes from Spacetime, for New Scientist, and contributes columns to Physics World. And, she teaches the next generation of astronomers and physicists.

In 1835, the three little girls from the Cape Verdean community could attend teenage Marias first school, but when Mitchell became an astronomy professor at Vassar, they would not have been allowed to enroll. Prescod-Weinstein is acutely aware of the loss of stories such as theirs. Even in the worst conditions, she writes in her book, The Disordered Cosmos, Black women have looked up at the night sky and wondered. Those women whose names I do not know, who may or may not be part of my bloodline, are as much my intellectual ancestors as Isaac Newton is.

Prescod-Weinsteins mother is Barbadian and her Ashkenazi father was raised in part in Trinidad. Like Mitchell, Prescod-Weinstein celebrates her familys example. Im a third-generation teacher. Informed opposition to injustice is as natural a part of her heritage as teaching. The most recent book by her 91-year-old grandmother, Selma James, is Our Time Is Now: Sex, Race, Class, and Caring for People and Planet.

Published last year, The Disordered Cosmos elliptically orbits the theme of Prescod-Weinsteins research in the context of her personal experience and intellectual coming of age. It ranges from the Alice-in-Wonderland contradictions of quantum mechanics to exploring how a dominant culture controls the naming of new concepts about nature and science to worrying about the dangers of an infamously colonialist culture carrying flags to the moon and Mars.

You know, Prescod-Weinstein says, you come to college in Boston, you go to a place like Harvard, and you hear about people like Maria Mitchell because theyre considered the great historical figures of the Boston-metro area. Its interesting which stories people choose to emphasize and choose to not emphasize. And that story about Mitchell refusing to segregate her school? That is not one I was told while I was in college. It wasnt considered worth remembering.

Author Rebecca Solnit wrote that stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell. The century and a half of womens struggles in science since Maria Mitchell has resulted in new constellations of astronomers gazing at the sky. With her work on comets and sunspots, as well as her unconventional teaching methods, Mitchell created a model for an alternate intellectual genealogy in the field of astronomy. Aware of the many women of color excluded from this genealogy, Prescod-Weinstein also divides her time between studying the sky and critiquing science and society. Like Mitchell, Prescod-Weinstein sees adding new observers as a way of changing science itself. Creating room for Black children to freely love particle physics and cosmology, she writes in her book, means radically changing society and the role of physicists within it.

Michael Sims is writing a book about the young Frederick Douglass. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Maria Mitchells first students having a Caribbean background, when the historical record only supports a probable African heritage.

Link:

She was a Quaker and self-taught astronomer with a radical idea: The stars belong to us all - The Boston Globe

The human eye is an amazing piece of equipment. It's so useful it likely evolved dozens of time independently as my friend Julia Sweeney says (paraphrased), "What good is half an eye? Probably about half as good as an eye." and allows us a way to sense the world and Universe around us with decent precision.

But... it's only sensitive to a very narrow range of light. It took a long time for humans to figure this out, but what we call visible light is only thin slice of the kind of light that's out there. Gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, microwaves... these are all forms of light with wavelengths too short or too long for the human eye to register.

If we only look to the heavens so see the visible light it sends us, we're missing out on well over 99.9% of what's out there.

Radio and millimeter waves are profoundly important things to be able to detect. So many objects emit them, from the Sun and planets to dust clouds forming stars and electrons whizzing around magnetic field lines around black holes and supernovae. By studying this form of light we get much more information about the Universe, and keen insight into the engines that drive it.

Every year there are incredible new discoveries made because astronomers and engineers built the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the immense Greenbank Radio Telescope, the Very Large Array, and more; huge dishes or multiple combined dishes to scan the sky and, well, see what we can see, even if we can't see them per se.

So it was my pleasure to work with my friends at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) to present some amazing long-wavelength astronomical highlights from 2021. We combed through the year's research, found eight wonderful stories, and I wrote and did the voice-over for beautiful animations that NRAO created to explain these phenomena. Fasten your seatbelts! We're going to travel from the nearest astronomical object in the Universe out to its most distant reaches.

Radio telescopes don't just receive long-wavelength light from objects; some can transmit it to bounce off nearby solar system bodies like the Moon. This technique, called synthetic aperture radar, can be used to map the Moon to an incredible resolution of just 5 meters. The initial tests have been so successful that NRAO received a multi-million dollar NSF grant to expand its efforts.

Our Milky Way galaxy is actively making stars, and many galaxies we see are fecund indeed. But others appear to have their star formation being quenched, where star birth is suppressed or even stagnant. To learn why, astronomers turned to ALMA to find out.

The nearby galaxy M87 has an enormous central supermassive black hole, famous for posing for the first ever high-resolution image of such a beast, which is blasting out a powerful beam of matter and energy that stretches for thousands of light years. Detailed observations using the Very Large Array show that along some its length the jet is actually a pair of entwined corkscrew spirals, a double helix much like DNA.

We see stars in the process of formation in nearby gas clouds with quite a bit of detail, but finding massive stars ones with many times the mass of the Sun in the throes of formation is more difficult. However, looking at the nebula W51, astronomers found three such monsters being created, helping them understand what's different for them than for more modest stars.

One of the more amazing recent advances in astronomy is being able to see planets forming around other stars in huge swirling disks of gas and dust. Elias-2-27 is nearby still-forming star where a massive planet is also collecting itself. ALMA observations show the chaos that such an event sows.

This is one of my favorites stories from 2021: A star went supernova in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth. Routine, right? Yeah, well, they also found evidence that the reason this supernova occurred is because a black hole collided with the star, fell to the center, and made such a mess in the star's core that it exploded. Holy wow!

How do stars in our galaxy form? In a huge survey of the sky, astronomers used the Very Large Array to map hydrogen gas, as well as complex molecules like methanol and formaldehyde, and saw star factories churning them out, as well as the expanding debris from stars that exploded long ago.

In 2021, a type of active galaxy called a quasar was found so far away its light took over 13 billion years to reach us a distance record. At its heart is a huge black hole powering its energetic emission... which is actually a problem, since we're not sure how it could've grown to such a large size so quickly after the formation of the Universe itself.

Pretty cool, the things we can do when we open our eyes past what our eyes alone can see! And if you think these are nifty, then check out the lists we did for 2020 and for 2019.

When I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia working toward my degree, we would often walk up the street to the NRAO HQ to attend talks by local and visiting radio astronomers (and also to play volleyball, since they had a great court there). It was a lot of fun to listen to people talk about their observations using instruments totally different than what I used, and to hear about new discoveries as they happened. It is a huge honor and pleasure to be able to work with NRAO now to create these annual highlights. I hope you like them too.

See original here:

8 highlights of radio astronomy in 2021 - Syfy

7 February 2022 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

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By Ayya Lmahamad

A little bit more than a year has passed since the liberation of Azerbaijani territories from Armenian occupation. Large-scale rehabilitation and construction work is underway on these lands.

In one of hisinterviews, President Ilham Aliyev said that we will have to build, equip an area equal to the territory of a country that is not the smallest in the world - Lebanon.

Azerbaijan started to restore and rehabilitate its lands immediately after the end of hostilities.

In 2021, Azerbaijan allocated $1.5 billion for the reconstruction of liberated territories, followed by AZN 2.2 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2022. These funds will be used primarily to restore infrastructure (electricity, gas, water, communications, roads, education, health, and so on) as well as cultural and historical monuments.

Astronomical station in Karabakh

Within a short period of time, Azerbaijan reconstructed the major infrastructure facilities on its liberated lands. Among them are the construction and opening ofFuzuli International Airport, the smart city project, that is already under completion inZangilan region, the construction and rehabilitation of various substations, roads, etc.

Executive Director of the ShamakhiAstrophysical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences Professor Nariman Ismayilov recently stated that a new astronomical station will be built in the countrys Karabakh region in the near future.

He noted that the management of the National Academy of Science supported the proposal to build a new astronomical station in the Karabakh region, install modern robotic telescopes, create a central space testing site on the territory of the observatory to study the Earth through satellite observations.

This work will be an important step in the transformation of the ShamakhiAstrophysical Observatory into an international scientific center to explore the near and far space.

Astronomy in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has contributed to the development of science in the world, particularly so in astronomy. The country has got a real astronomical heritage, thanks to the presence in the 13 century of the famous Maragha Observatory in South Azerbaijan (now northwestern Iran) established by Azerbaijani astronomer Nasiraddin Tusi.

The development of national astronomy in the last century can be described through three stages.

The first stage covers the period of 1927-1991 and includes such events as the first astronomical expeditions and the establishment of the ShamakhiAstrophysical Observatory.

The Observatory was established in 1960 on the basis of the Astrophysics Sector of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijani SSR and its Shamakhi Astronomical Station (Pirgulu). It is considered as one of the large scientific centers for favorable astroclimatic conditions, equipped with telescopes and scientific equipment.

The second stage covers the period of 1992-1997 and is characterized as a "stagnation period"in the history of national astronomy [due to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, national and political instabilities in the newly independent country in its transition period, Armenian intervention, etc].

A new stage began in the second half of 997 with repairing, renovation, and reorganization work in the observatory and in astronomical activity in general.

Currently, astronomical research in Azerbaijan is conducted mainly in the ShamakhiAstrophysical Observatory and partially in relevant departments of several universities in Baku and in other organizations. There are three main scientific trends at the observatory - the physics of stars and nebulae, investigation of solar system bodies, and solar physics.

Azerbaijan has almost all of the attributes required for astronomy. The main contribution comes from the ShamakhiAstrophysical Observatory, which has headquarters and two high-mountain astronomical stations with favorable geographical locations. There is also a good astro-climate. Another significant fact is the mandatory teaching of astronomy as a separate subject in all higher-secondary schools, lyceums, as well as the teaching of astronomy and the fundamentals of space science in many university departments.

Additionally, Azerbaijani astronomers are actively involved in the works of some international organizations aiming at enhancing the participation of youth in astronomical and space activities and education.

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Ayya Lmahamadis AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter:@AyyaLmahamad

Follow us on Twitter@AzerNewsAz

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Azerbaijan to build astronomical station in liberated Karabakh - AzerNews

Artists impression of WASP-189b, an exoplanet orbiting the star HD 133112 which is one of the hottest stars known to have a planetary system.

Among the infinite mysteries of the cosmic world, one of the most intriguing aspects is the possibility of alien life. And the first step towards understanding such probability is to hunt for faraway worlds that resemble Earth-like conditions to host life as we know it.

Recently, astronomers have revealed some exciting details about the atmosphere of WASP-189ba scorching exoplanet located about 322 light-years from Earth. The exotic worlds located beyond the realms of our solar system are called exoplanets, and we have detected more than 4,000 such planets so far. But these new findings show that WASP-189b is absolutely unique!

Interestingly, this hot, Jupiter-like planet might consist of distinct atmospheric layersjust like planet Earth.

Earths atmosphere has five major layers: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Each of these layers has a role to play, like the stratosphere hosts the ozone layer, while the troposphere hosts life-sustaining oxygen.

Earlier, astronomers believed that exoplanets usually host only uniform layers, but this study suggests otherwise. This is for the first time that scientists have been able to detect the presence of distinct layers in the atmosphere of such a hostile exoplanet.

Astronomers from the Universities of Lund, Bern, and Geneva peered into the atmosphere of this exoplanet using the CHEOPS space telescope. Moreover, they also carried out detailed investigations using the HARPS spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, which allowed them to get insights into the exoplanets atmosphere.

They found fingerprints of gases like iron, chromium, vanadium, magnesium, and manganese during the investigation. According to the statement, they found that the fingerprints of the different gases were slightly altered than expected. Further extensive observations revealed hints of layers on the hot exoplanet.

The team hypothesised that the alterations could result from strong winds and other processes. And this could possibly indicate the presence of different atmospheric layers.

Surprisingly, the team also detected the presence of titanium oxide that may act as an ozone layer to this exoplanet.

Titanium oxide absorbs shortwave radiation, such as ultraviolet radiation. Its detection could therefore indicate a layer in the atmosphere of WASP-189b that interacts with the stellar irradiation similarly to how the Ozone layer does on Earth, said Kevin Heng, study co-author from the University of Bern and a member of the NCCR PlanetS.

Observations conducted using the space-based telescope revealed several other details about the scorching WASP-189b. The exoplanet is 20 times closer to its host star than Earth is to the Sun, while the blistering daytime temperature shoots up to 3200C at WASP-189b.

The study results can further our understanding of the atmospheres of other bizarre exoplanets, including Earth-like planets. We never know; scientists might even detect worlds just like the planet Earth sooner than expected.

The results have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy and can be accessed here.

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See original here:

Astronomers Detect Hints of Earth's Atmospheric Characteristics in Scorching Exoplanet WASP-189b | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather...

Hebridean Dark Skies Festival

A packed programme of astronomy talks, stargazing, films, music, visual art and theatre combines to create the Dark Skies Festival on the Isle of Lewis, which runs from 11-25 February. The Dark Skies exhibition will feature newly commissioned works by a group of Hebridean artists, stargazing events will be held indoors at the Cosmos Planetarium and outside with Highland Astronomy, and the festival will kick off with a night of comedy and astronomy. Stay at the Royal, a harbourside hotel, with a restaurant specialising in local meat and fish (doubles from 131, B&B, royalstornoway.co.uk). More information at lanntair.com

The festival in Exmoor happens in autumn, but if you cant wait that long there are regular Dark Skies events in the school holidays (a Night Sky Stargazing & Bushcraft Adventure evening is taking place on 21 February), while the Dark Sky Discovery Trail is a two-mile route across open moorland that takes in some of the best places to see the stars (exmoorwalks.org/darksky). Stay at the Exmoor White Horse Inn, a 16th-century inn (doubles from 119, B&B, exmoor-whitehorse.co.uk). exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk

Learn about the night sky while hiking across open moorland, soaking in a hot tub, paddling a canoe or listening to expert astronomers all on offer across the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Park. The festival runs from 18 February to 6 March and includes a rocket-making workshop and planet pizza-making evening. Stay at the 16th-century White Hart Inn (doubles from 120, B&B; whiteharthawes.co.uk).yorkshiredales.org.uk

One of the least-populated regions of the UK, this is an excellent stargazing spot with little light pollution. Its festival runs from 12-28 February, with events including aurora hunting at the Battlesteads Observatory, astronomy workshops, moon walks and stargazing experiences on Hadrians Wall. Stay at the Battlesteads Hotel, just across the road from the observatory, with a buzzy dining room and stylish bedrooms (doubles from 115, B&B, battlesteads.com). northumberlandnationalpark.org.uk

The South Downs is holding its festival in February, with star- and moongazing events at Queen Elizabeth Country Park in Hampshire, Seven Sisters Country Park in East Sussex, and Brighton seafront. Local astronomy groups along the coast will hold talks, with tours of the planets at the South Downs Planetarium in Chichester. Stay at the White Horse Inn in Sutton, a coaching inn with a well-loved restaurant (doubles from 133, B&B, whitehorseinn-sutton.co.uk). southdowns.gov.uk

Three spots across the park have been designated Dark Sky sites, offering the chance to see some spectacular starlit skies. The car parks at Parsley Hay, near Hartington, Surprise View near Hathersage and Minninglow at Pikehall have astronomy panels to help visitors explore the constellations, and private Stargazing Experiences in Hathersage can be arranged through Dark Sky Telescope Hire (darkskytelescopehire.co.uk). Stay at the George, a historic inn (doubles from 150, B&B, thegeorgehathersage.com).peakdistrict.gov.uk

Keen stargazers should put 23-25 September in their diaries for the second annual Beacons Dark Skies Festival, with events for astrophotographers, families and keen astronomers. Alongside practical workshops, there are talks on the history and folklore that surrounds the constellations and the nocturnal wildlife that depends on them. New for this year is a mobile, inflatable planetarium that will be set up in locations across the Park. Stay at Gliffaes, a country house hotel just outside Crickhowell (doubles from 155, B&B, gliffaeshotel.com). beacons-npa.gov.uk

Art workshops, wood-whittling courses and guided night-time swims are on offer at the Cumbria Dark Skies Festival (12-26 February), along with woodside walks beneath starry skies, moon watching and listening to nocturnal wildlife. Stay at the Wordsworth Hotel & Spa in Grasmere a short drive from the Dark Sky Discovery Centre at Allan Bank (doubles from 118, B&B, thewordsworthhotel.co.uk).visitlakedistrict.com

The Forests Dark Skies festival takes place over half-term (12-20 February), and although the live events are fully booked, you can join some online. The skies above the forest are spectacular at any time, however, and its easy to stargaze independently, with public Dark Sky Discovery Sites around the Forest at Beacon Fell Country Park, Gisburn Forest Hub, Slaidburn Village Car Park and Crook o Lune picnic site. Stay at the Inn at Whitewell, an elegant 17th-century hotel (doubles from 140, B&B, innatwhitewell.com). forestofbowland.com

The most northerly Dark Sky Park in the world, the Cairngorms is ablaze with stars and theres a chance of seeing the Northern Lights. The skies are so dark its possible to see nebula just using binoculars, with the snow roads between Braemar and the Spittal of Glenshee and Glen Muick being two of the best places to stargaze. Stay at Culdearn House, a classic Victorian country house hotel (doubles from 220, B&B, culdearn.com). cairngorms.co.uk.

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Heavens above: top 10 UK Dark Skies festivals and stargazing destinations - The Guardian

The Chinese New Year or the Lunar New Year falls on Tuesday with over a billion people in China and millions of others around the world celebrating the beginning of the Year of the Tiger.

The beginning of the 15-day festival on February 1 and the end of the Year of the Ox, also marks the date of the new moon in Asia. The celebrations are considered to be a time to honor ancestors and deities as well as spending time with family.

Though China follows the Gregorian calendara solar dating system introduced Pope Gregory XIII in 1582in everyday life, the Chinese calendar is used to mark traditional holidays like the New Year.

This calendar is lunisolar in nature, which means that it is based on the cycles of both the moon and the sun. The Lunar New Year begins each year with the first new moon of the lunar calendar.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, the new moon is essentially the opposite of the full moon. Rather than seeing the side of the moon illuminated by the sun as we do during a full moon with the effect of making it appear as a bright full disc, during the new moon, we see the moon's non-illuminated side making it appear mostly dark blending in with the night sky.

This happens because the new moon marks the time during the lunar cycle at which the moon is almost perfectly aligned with Earth on one side and the sun on the other. Because the moon takes 29.5 days to orbit the Earth and complete a lunar cycle this usually occurs once a month.

In the Chinese calendar, a month lasts a lunar cycle, with its first day marked by the new moon. There are usually 12 months in a Chinese calendar year, but in order to catch up with the Gregorian calendar an extra month is added every two or three years.

All of this means that the Lunar New Year falls on a different day each year though it always falls between January 20 and February 21 on the Gregorian calendar. The first new moon in Asia this year occurred at 1:46 pm Beijing time on February 1, or 12:46 am ET on the same day.

The end of the 15-day New Year celebration is also marked by a significant event in the lunar cycle, the full moon following the year's first new moon.

The end of New Year celebrations in Asian countries including China, North and South Korea, Singapore, Mongolia, Tibet, and Vietnam falls on February 15 this year. This is timed each year to coincide with the full moon following the first new moon of the year and will be marked by The Lantern Festival. This may not always be the first full moon of the year according to the Gregorian calendar.

The Year of the Tiger, which occurs once every 12 years with the last one in 2010, will last until the first new moon of next year which falls on January 22, 2023. This marks the beginning of the Year of the Water Rabbit.

The rest is here:

Lunar New Year: The Astronomy of Chinese New Year Explained - Newsweek

Its always fun to find the things that define your birthday. Whether its your zodiac sign, the top song on the Billboard charts, or the #1 movie, its always interesting to see how things were the day you were born.

Now you can add a NASA astronomy picture of the day (APOD) to your list.

A new trend on TikTok has people sharing the picture the Hubble Space Telescope took on their birthday.

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The Hubble, which launched in 1990 and has been roaming in space ever since, explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, taking photos every day on its journey, according to NASA.

Beginning in 1995, NASA has chosen a daily photo taken from the Hubble Space Telescope as their Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each image is archived on NASAs website along with a description of the image written by an astronomer.

And in 2021, they launched a website that allows anyone to search for the APOD selected on their birthday (or any other day you find significant).

To find your NASA picture of the day for your birthday or if you were born before , you simply go to the NASA APOD calendar archive. There are a few ways you can get there.

1. Do a Google search for "NASA calendar."

2. Click on the search result that takes you to the Astronomy Picture of the Day Calendar.

3. Find your birth year in the table and click on the month your birthday falls in.

4. Count the days to find your birthday and click on the image to see it and read all about it.

1. Simply go directly to the tool NASA developed to make finding the picture they took on your birthday.

2. Select the month and day of your birthday and click on "submit."

3. This tool does not allow you to specify your year of birth, so you will be shown the image of the day for your birthday on a random year the system selects for you.

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Unfortunately, as mentioned above, photos have only archived since June 16, 1995.

So if youre any older than about 26, youll have to settle for looking at pictures taken on your birthday and not your actual date of birth.

Of course, its also fun to look up your kids and friends birthdays, anniversaries, and other special dates.

Have fun!

RELATED:96 Space Quotes & Inspirational Quotes About The Universe

Micki Spollen is an editor, writer, and traveler. Follow her on Instagram and keep up with her travels on her website.

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How To Find The Picture NASA Took On Your Birthday - YourTango

Newswise The formation of massive stars and planets. The deaths of stars and galaxies. The extreme and violent behaviors of black hole jets and quasars. An up-close and personal radar view of the Moon. These mysteries and more were unraveled in 2021 by radio astronomers leveraging the scientific and technological power of National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) facilities: the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Very Long Baseline Array, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Arrayan international collaboration with the European Southern Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Narrated by Phil Plait, NRAOs top 2021 science highlights explore the awe-provoking wonders of the Universe.

Massive Planet Formation

Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to study how planets form around young stars. It turns out that large planets form thanks to a bit of chaos.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about how planets can form from the original press release:

Study of Young Chaotic Star System Reveals Planet Formation Secrets

Massive Star Formation

How do some stars get so massive? The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) tried to find out by studying an active star-forming region. It turns out the process of large star formation is messier than we thought.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about how massive stars are born from the original press release:

ALMA Shows Massive Young Stars Forming in “Chaotic Mess”

Star-Forming in the Milky Way

Where do stars form in the Milky Way? More places than you might think. Recently a project called the Global View on Star Formation in the Milky Way (GLOSTAR) found previously undiscovered regions in our galaxy where large stars are being born.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about where stars form in the Milky Way from the original press release:

New Study Reveals Previously Unseen Star Formation in Milky Way

Galaxies Running Out Of Gas

Some galaxies stop producing stars when they are still young. It turns out they run out of available gas early on. Now astronomers are using a survey called VERTICO The Virgo Environment Traced in Carbon Monoxide Survey to find out why.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about how galaxies run out of gas from the original press release:

ALMA Scientists Uncover the Mystery of Early Massive Galaxies Running on Empty

Compact Object Creates a Supernova

When a star eats a black hole, it can create a massive explosion. Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have studied radio light from a supernova, which shows it may have been triggered by the last meal of a massive star.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about what can cause a supernova from the original press release:

Stellar Collision Triggers Supernova Explosion

Quasar Distance Record

Quasars are brilliant objects powered by supermassive black holes. They are often seen at the edge of the observable universe. Early this year the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered the most distant quasar ever, powered by a black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than the Sun.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about this distant quasar from the original press release:

Quasar Discovery Sets New Distance Record

Helical Jet of M87

When black holes consume matter, they can create powerful jets of ionized material that stream away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light. Using NRAOs Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have captured images of one such jet coming from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87, revealing a complex helical structure.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about the jets of M87 from the original press release:

VLA Reveals Double-Helix Structure in Massive Galaxy’s Jet

Planetary Radar

Astronomers study the Universe by capturing light from stars, planets, and galaxies. But they can also study nearby objects by shining radio light on them. Its a process known as astronomical radar, and its revealing fascinating details about our planetary neighbors.

Writing and narration provided by Phil Plait @SYFY

Discover more about astronomical radar from the original press release:

IMAGE RELEASE: Moon’s Tycho Crater Revealed in Intricate Detail

Originally posted here:

2021 Science Highlights: Looking Back on a Turbulent Year in Radio Astronomy - Newswise