Category Archives: Astronomy

On Tuesday, July 11 at 10a.m., the Westfield Memorial Library will present another popular two-hour coloring workshop for adults, and on Wednesday, July 12 at 7p.m., the library will present, Astronomy for Everyone The Size and Scale of the Universe. The library is located at 550 East Broad Street.

The coloring patterns the library will provide are geometric, intricate, abstract, and designed to appeal to adults. All other materials, as well as coffee and tea, will be provided.

The coloring program is free and open to the public. No need to register, just stop by and be prepared to have some fun.

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Astronomy for Everyone will be presented by astronomer Kevin Manning. Designed for adults and children over the age of nine, this program will draw attention to the celestial skies and the rare total solar eclipse occurring Aug.21an event not seen in 99 years.

After the talk, weather permitting, the audience will go outside for a real look at the treasures of the universe.

Mr. Manning is a gifted astronomer, who has worked as a consultant with NASA; the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, launched on the space shuttle with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; and other ground-based observatories.

He has won national and international awards within his field, was both a Wright Fellow and an Einstein Fellow, and did some work with Brookhaven National Laboratory.

He has presented numerous workshops in libraries, observatories, and science centers, including Tufts University, State University of New York at Bony Brook, the National Teachers Association's National Convention, American Association for the Advancement of Science Breakfast, and the National Parks Service.

The program is open to Westfield Memorial Library and MURAL cardholders. (MURAL cardholders belong to the 43 libraries that are part of the Middlesex Union Reciprocal Agreement Libraries. Visit http://www.wmlnj.org and click on the About Us tab to see if your library participates.) To register for the program, visit the librarys website at http://www.wmlnj.org, click on the Online Calendar, or call 908.789.4090 option 0.

Founded in 1879, the Westfield Memorial Librarythe communitys destination for discovery and ideasengages minds, entertains spirits and facilitates lifelong learning for people of all ages. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 9p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9:30 a.m. to 5p.m., Friday and Saturday; and closed on Sunday for the summer. The library will be Tuesday, July 4 for Independence Day.

For more information call 908-789-4090, visit the librarys website at http://www.wmlnj.org, and sign up for the monthly e-newsletter Library Loop, or stop by the library at 550 East Broad Street for a copy of the award-winning quarterly newsletter Take Note.

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Westfield Memorial Library Presents Astronomy for Everyone and Coloring for Adults - TAPinto.net

Artists impression of two stars speeding from the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, to its outskirts. These hypervelocity stars move at several hundred of km/s, much faster than the galactic average. Credit: ESA

With the help of software that mimics a human brain, ESAs Gaia satellite spotted six stars zipping at high speed from the centre of our galaxy to its outskirts. This could provide key information about some of the most obscure regions of the Milky Way.

The results were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society, EWASS 2017, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Our galactic home, the Milky Way, houses more than a hundred billion stars, all kept together by gravity. Most are located in a flattened structure the galactic disc with a bulge at its centre, while the remaining stars are distributed in a wider spherical halo extending out to about 650,000 light-years from the centre.

Stars are not motionless in the galaxy but move around its centre with a variety of velocities depending on their location for example, the Sun orbits at about 220 km/s, while the average in the halo is about 150 km/s. Occasionally, a few stars exceed these already quite impressive velocities. Some are accelerated by a close stellar encounter or the supernova explosion of a stellar companion, resulting in runaway stars with speeds up to a few hundred km/s above the average.

A new class of high-speed stars was discovered just over a decade ago. Swooping through the galaxy at several hundred of km/s, they are the result of past interactions with the supermassive black hole that sits at the centre of the Milky Way and, with a mass of four million Suns, governs the orbits of stars in its vicinity.

These hypervelocity stars are extremely important to study the overall structure of our Milky Way, says Elena Maria Rossi from Leiden University in the Netherlands, who presented Gaias discovery of six new such stars today at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Prague.

These are stars that have travelled great distances through the galaxy but can be traced back to its core an area so dense and obscured by interstellar gas and dust that it is normally very difficult to observe so they yield crucial information about the gravitational field of the Milky Way from the centre to its outskirts.

Unfortunately, fast-moving stars are extremely difficult to find in the stellar haystack of the Milky Way, as current surveys list the speed of at most a few hundred thousand stars.

To find them, scientists have been looking for young, massive stars that would stand out as interlopers in the old stellar population of the galactic halo. Given away by their out-of-place age, these stars are likely to have received an extra kick to reach the halo. Further measurements of their speeds and estimates of their past paths can confirm if they are indeed hypervelocity stars that were shoved away from the centre of the Milky Way.

So far, only 20 such stars have been spotted. Owing to the specific selection of this method, these are all young stars with a mass 2.5 to 4 times that of the Sun. However, scientists believe that many more stars of other ages or masses are speeding through the galaxy but remain unrevealed by this type of search.

The billion-star census being performed by Gaia offers a unique opportunity, so Elena and her collaborators started wondering how to use such a vast dataset to optimise the search for fast-moving stars.

After testing various methods, they turned to software through which the computer learns from previous experience.

In the end, we chose to use an artificial neural network, which is software designed to mimic how our brain works, explains Tommaso Marchetti, PhD student at Leiden University and lead author of the paper describing the results published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

After proper training, it can learn how to recognise certain objects or patterns in a huge dataset. In our case, we taught it to spot hypervelocity stars in a stellar catalogue like the one compiled with Gaia.

As part of Elenas research project to study these stars, the team started developing and training this program in the first half of 2016, in order to be ready for the first release of Gaia data a few months later, on 14 September.

Besides a map of over a billion stellar positions, this first release included a smaller catalogue with distances and motions for two million stars, combining observations from Gaias first year with those from ESAs Hipparcos mission, which charted the sky more than two decades ago. Referred to as the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution, or TGAS, this resource is a taster for future catalogues that will be based solely on Gaia data.

On the day of the data release, we ran our brand new algorithm on the two million stars of TGAS, says Rossi. In just one hour, the artificial brain had already reduced the dataset to some 20,000 potential high-speed stars, reducing its size to about 1%. A further selection including only measurements above a certain precision in distance and motion brought this down to 80 candidate stars.

The team looked at these 80 stars in further detail. Since only information on the stars motion across the sky are included in the TGAS data, they had to find additional clues to infer their velocity, looking at previous stellar catalogues or performing new observations. Combining all these data, we found that six stars can be traced back to the galactic centre, all with velocities above 360 km/s, says Tommaso.

Most importantly, the scientists succeeded at probing a different population from the 20 stars that were already known: the newly identified stars all have lower masses, similar to the mass of our Sun. One of the six stars seems to be speeding so fast, at over 500 km/s, that it is no longer bound by the gravity of the galaxy and will eventually leave. But the other, slightly slower stars, are perhaps even more fascinating, as scientists are eager to learn what slowed them down the invisible dark matter that is thought to pervade the Milky Way might also have played a role.

While the new program was optimised to search for stars that were accelerated at the centre of the galaxy, it also identified five of the more traditional runaway stars, which owe their high speeds to stellar encounters elsewhere in the Milky Way.

This result showcases the great potential of Gaia opening up new avenues to investigate the structure and dynamics of our galaxy, says Anthony Brown from Leiden University, a co-author on the study and chair of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. The scientists are looking forward to using data from the next Gaia release, which is planned for April 2018 and will include distances and motions on the sky for over a billion stars, as well as velocities for a subset.

Dealing with a billion stars, rather than the two million explored so far, is an enormous challenge, so the team is busy upgrading their program to handle such a huge catalogue and to uncover the many speeding stars that will be lurking in the data. The sheer number of stars probed by Gaia is an exciting but also challenging opportunity for astronomers, and we are glad to see that they are happily embracing the challenge, says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

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Artificial brain helps Gaia catch speeding stars - Astronomy Now Online

Posted June 28, 2017 12:22:53

In what is being hailed as a "groundbreaking discovery", astronomers have for the first time observed two supermassive black holes orbiting around each other in a distant galaxy, according to new research.

In an article published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers have detailed how they used radio telescopes to detect what appeared to be two black holes moving in relation to each other in radio galaxy 0402+379 .

"For a long time, we've been looking into space to try and find a pair of these supermassive black holes orbiting as a result of two galaxies merging," University of New Mexico's professor of physics and astronomy Greg Taylor said.

"Even though we've theorised that this should be happening, nobody had ever seen it until now."

The research team has been studying the two objects, which lie at the centre of the bulging galaxy, since 2003.

The galaxy itself was discovered in 1995 and is approximately 750 million light years away from Earth.

The lead author of the paper, Karishma Bansal, said the black holes are at a "separation of about seven parsecs," or 217 trillion kilometres.

"[This] is the closest together that two supermassive black holes have ever been seen before," she said.

The black holes are among the largest ever found, with a combined mass 15 billion times that of the sun, the study says.

If confirmed, it will be the smallest ever recorded movement of an object across the sky at a rate of just over one micro-arc second per year, an angle about 1 billion times smaller than the smallest thing visible with the naked eye.

That means one black hole is believed to be orbiting around the other over a period of 30,000 years, the researchers said.

"If you imagine a snail on the recently discovered Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri a bit over four light years away moving at one centimetre a second, that's the angular motion we're resolving here," Stanford's professor of physics and co-author of the paper, Roger W Romani, said.

The researchers are hoping the finding will offer insight into "how black holes merge, how these mergers affect the evolution of the galaxies around them and ways to find other binary black-hole systems".

Large galaxies often have supermassive black holes at their centre and astronomers argue, if large galaxies combine, their black holes eventually follow suit.

As a result, the researchers have suggested that it is possible the apparent orbit of the black hole in 0402+379 is an "intermediary stage in this process".

But, given how slowly the pair is orbiting, the team thinks the black holes are too far apart to come together within the estimated remaining age of the universe, unless there is an added source of friction, they argue.

Topics: blackholes, astronomy-space, science-and-technology, space-exploration, community-and-society, united-states

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Astronomers discover orbiting supermassive black holes for first time in distant galaxy - ABC Online

A system of merging galaxies located about 140 million light years from Earth. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Crete/K. Anastasopoulou et al, NASA/NuSTAR/GSFC/A. Ptak et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

What would happen if you took two galaxies and mixed them together over millions of years? A new image including data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals the cosmic culinary outcome.

Arp 299 is a system located about 140 million light-years from Earth. It contains two galaxies that are merging, creating a partially blended mix of stars from each galaxy in the process.

However, this stellar mix is not the only ingredient. New data from Chandra reveals 25 bright X-ray sources sprinkled throughout the Arp 299 concoction. Fourteen of these sources are such strong emitters of X-rays that astronomers categorize them as ultra-luminous X-ray sources, or ULXs.

These ULXs are found embedded in regions where stars are currently forming at a rapid rate. Most likely, the ULXs are binary systems where a neutron star or black hole is pulling matter away from a companion star that is much more massive than the Sun. These double star systems are called high-mass X-ray binaries.

Such a loaded buffet of high-mass X-ray binaries is rare, but Arp 299 is one of the most powerful star-forming galaxies in the nearby universe. This is due at least in part to the merger of the two galaxies, which has triggered waves of star formation. The formation of high-mass X-ray binaries is a natural consequence of such blossoming star birth as some of the young massive stars, which often form in pairs, evolve into these systems.

This new composite image of Arp 299 contains X-ray data from Chandra (pink), higher-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR (purple), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (white and faint brown). Arp 299 also emits copious amounts of infrared light that has been detected by observatories such as NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope, but those data are not included in this composite.

The infrared and X-ray emission of the galaxy is remarkably similar to that of galaxies found in the very distant universe, offering an opportunity to study a relatively nearby analog of these distant objects. A higher rate of galaxy collisions occurred when the universe was young, but these objects are difficult to study directly because they are located at colossal distances.

The Chandra data also reveal diffuse X-ray emission from hot gas distributed throughout Arp 299. Scientists think the high rate of supernovas, another common trait of star-forming galaxies, has expelled much of this hot gas out of the center of the system.

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Chandra samples galactic goulash - Astronomy Now Online

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2017 June 27

Explanation: Distant galaxies and nearby nebulas highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in this 80-exposure mosaic is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy in the image, visible on the lower right. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just above it, a large galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas. Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen, as well as many foreground Milky Way stars. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN), a vast and complex screen of diffuse gas and dust also in our Milky Way Galaxy. Details of the red and yellow IFN, digitally enhanced, were imaged by a new wide-field camera recently installed at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands of Spain.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Official Site

This is a wide view of galaxy cluster MACS J2129-0741, located in the constellation Aquarius. The massive galaxy cluster magnifies, brightens, and distorts the images of remote background galaxies, including the far-distant, dead disc galaxy MACS2129-1. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH team

By combining the power of a natural lens in space with the capability of NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discoverythe first example of a compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disc-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang.

Finding such a galaxy early in the history of the universe challenges the current understanding of how massive galaxies form and evolve, say researchers.

When Hubble photographed the galaxy, astronomers expected to see a chaotic ball of stars formed through galaxies merging together. Instead, they saw evidence that the stars were born in a pancake-shaped disc.

This is the first direct observational evidence that at least some of the earliest so-called dead galaxies where star formation stopped somehow evolve from a Milky Way-shaped disc into the giant elliptical galaxies we see today.

This is a surprise because elliptical galaxies contain older stars, while spiral galaxies typically contain younger blue stars. At least some of these early dead disc galaxies must have gone through major makeovers. They not only changed their structure, but also the motions of their stars to make a shape of an elliptical galaxy.

This new insight may force us to rethink the whole cosmological context of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve into local elliptical-shaped galaxies, said study leader Sune Toft of the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early dead galaxies could in fact be discs, simply because we havent been able to resolve them.

Previous studies of distant dead galaxies have assumed that their structure is similar to the local elliptical galaxies they will evolve into. Confirming this assumption in principle requires more powerful space telescopes than are currently available. However, through the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, a massive, foreground cluster of galaxies acts as a natural zoom lens in space by magnifying and stretching images of far more distant background galaxies. By joining this natural lens with the resolving power of Hubble, scientists were able to see into the center of the dead galaxy.

The remote galaxy is three times as massive as the Milky Way but only half the size. Rotational velocity measurements made with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope (VLT) showed that the disc galaxy is spinning more than twice as fast as the Milky Way.

Using archival data from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH), Toft and his team were able to determine the stellar mass, star-formation rate, and the ages of the stars.

Why this galaxy stopped forming stars is still unknown. It may be the result of an active galactic nucleus, where energy is gushing from a supermassive black hole. This energy inhibits star formation by heating the gas or expelling it from the galaxy. Or it may be the result of the cold gas streaming onto the galaxy being rapidly compressed and heated up, preventing it from cooling down into star-forming clouds in the galaxys center.

But how do these young, massive, compact discs evolve into the elliptical galaxies we see in the present-day universe? Probably through mergers, Toft said. If these galaxies grow through merging with minor companions, and these minor companions come in large numbers and from all sorts of different angles onto the galaxy, this would eventually randomize the orbits of stars in the galaxies. You could also imagine major mergers. This would definitely also destroy the ordered motion of the stars.

Thefindingsare published in the June 22 issue of the journalNature. Toft and his team hope to use NASAs upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to look for a larger sample of such galaxies.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

The Very Large Telescope is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile.

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Hubble captures massive dead disc galaxy Astronomy Now - Astronomy Now Online

The night sky over the Cerro Mayu Observatory, Chile. // All images: Astronomy: Alison Klesman

Its been a busy week so far in Chile!

But first, a little more background: Why am I here in the Southern Hemisphere? Im participating in ACEAP: the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program, supported by the National Science Foundation and run via a collaboration of Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), and Gemini Observatory.

This unique program has several interlocking goals. Not only does it highlight the value of investing U.S. dollars in world-class facilities in the country of Chile, it also allows the ambassadors who embark upon this trip and the Chilean communities they visit to build and foster lasting relationships. Through these relationships, people in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres can work together to promote astronomy as a hobby, as a career, and as a fundamental way to answer questions both big and small. The night sky is shared by people across the world, and instilling a sense of wonder and of custodianship over this resource is the goal and the passion of each ambassador who arrived in Santiago earlier this week.

This year, the programs third year, Im very lucky to serve as a media liaison for the program on behalf of Astronomy magazine. Its my very first trip to Chile, though I grew familiar with many of the astronomical facilities during my years in graduate school. Now, Im getting the chance to see firsthand the outstanding astronomy efforts being made in Chile today, from the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

Weve been on the go since day one with a packed schedule, but each experience has been more memorable than the last. Honestly, the only thing theres little time for is sleep which is why I havent had the chance to sit down and blog before this, as Ive jumped on every chance to catch a few spare zs that popped up!

This morning, weve finally got a bit of spare time before we leave the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) after two nights on Cerro Tololo.

Ive already mentioned the busy schedule, but Id like to highlight just a few of my favorite parts of the trip so far:

Astronomers can control the Gemini South telescope from the convenience and comfort of this control room in La Serena if they like.

- Visiting the Observatorio Astronomico Andinoand the Cerro Mayu Observatory, where we spent time discussing astrotourism and astronomy education, as well as imaging the night sky. I saw my very first Southern Hemisphere sky from OAA, and took some amazing shots of it from Cerro Mayu, with some help from the experienced astrophotographers in our group!

- Spending the afternoon at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) headquarters in Chile, where we had the chance to speak with the staff about their education and outreach projects, as well as tour the electronics shop. We were able to see and, in some cases, hold detectors used to image the sky.

- Seeing the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) and the 8-meter Gemini South telescopes on Cerro Pachn; we even got to climb up the scope to see Geminis single-piece mirror and check out the amazing view from near the top of the dome.

- Touring CTIO, including getting an up-close look at the 4-meter Blanco telescope, the 2 Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) telescope, and the SMARTS Consortium telescopes.

The view from inside the Gemini South dome.

Aside from the opportunity to crawl around the domes of these famous telescopes, Ive also had a spectacular time getting to know my fellow ACEAP ambassadors. The group this year includes educators, photographers, planetarium directors, and outreach volunteers and coordinators, all extremely excited and passionate about bringing astronomy into the lives of people in the U.S., Chile, and throughout the world. As we travel, often in close quarters, weve engaged in talk, laughter, and song on our way from one location to the next. While I cant pretend Im not extremely excited about the remaining days of our trip were going to San Pedro next to visit a few schools, then on to tour ALMA on Friday and Saturday! I also have to admit that Im really looking forward to getting home and taking advantage of all the connections Ive made here to promote the projects and work of each and every ambassador Ive met. I will also be turning my experience here into a full feature story for the magazine, which Im ready to get home and write (well, following a couple full nights of sleep, probably).

The view this morning from Cerro Tololo - the clouds look like an ocean!

Since I cant write everything down here, nor should I, Id like to point you to some great resources as we continue our journey. You can find out more about our experiences so far and follow the remainder of our trip on Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.

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Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: Santiago ...

GLENS FALLS Take A Bite, the annual summer weekly food and entertainment festival, starts this week, with more than 35 participants set up along downtown sidewalks from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday.

I cant believe it whoo! said Candice Frye, chairwoman of the Take A Bite organizing committee of the Glens Falls Collaborative.

Musicians perform, restaurants sell small portions of entrees, appetizers and desserts, and community organizations set up information booths.

The festival has become an informal competition among restaurants to see who can come up with the most uncommon recipe each week, said Frye, executive director of Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council.

Frye said she is excited that two new dessert vendors Sweets by Marissa and Yum, Yum Ice will participate this year.

Take A Bite continues weekly from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Aug. 16.

Restaurants will be set up along Glen Street and Maple Street, and later in the summer along Ridge Street.

There will be a lot happening on Maple Street this year, Frye said.

Most Ridge Street restaurants, with the exception of Morgan & Company, will be set up on Glen Street this Wednesday, and possibly on subsequent Wednesdays, until work on the Ridge Street infrastructure project moves past the block of Ridge Street between the Centennial Circle roundabout and The Queensbury Hotel, Frye said.

Morgan and Company will still have its tent set up in front of the restaurant at the corner of Ridge and Maple streets.

Take A Bite is a great example of the way businesses and arts organizations work together to improve the citys quality of life, said Glens Falls Mayor Jack Diamond.

Its kind of the face of the city in the summertime, he said. Were looking forward to it.

Musical entertainment this Wednesday will be Milayne Jacksons Blue Train Trio at the Centennial Circle roundabout and saxophone soloist Gavin Munoff on Glen Street, in the vicinity of Crandall Public Library.

Coinciding with Take A Bite, Crandall Public Library will kick off its Eyes to the Skies summer free astronomy program series at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the community room in the library basement.

Kevin Manning, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a consultant to NASA, will speak.

The series leads up to the coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the United States on Aug. 21.

Follow staff writer Maury Thompson at All Politics is Local blog, at PS_Politics on Twitter and at Maury Thompson Post-Star on Facebook.

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Take A Bite starts Wednesday with food, music, astronomy - Glens Falls Post-Star

After establishing an independent review committee earlier this year, NASA announced on June 22 that the committee is looking into costs and scheduling issues with the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission.

WFIRST was designed with two main instruments, the Wide Field instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument, to study dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The Wide Field Instrument is to study light from galaxies and perform a microlensing survey of the Milky Way while the Coronagraph Instrument will take high contrast images.

The telescope is still being developed and was supposed to go into Phase B in October, but was delayed until an independent review could be done and see any recommendations from the report. Moving forward with the mission will depend on the amount of funding it will receive.

Due to budget cuts, the astrophysics program received a lot less than they had originally asked for about $31 million less, to be exact. The team said NASA sent Congress an operating plan to address the cuts.

Source: SpaceNews

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NASA is reviewing the WFIRST mission | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine

While congress stumbles its way through another budget battle that has the potential to cut drastically NASAs funding, China continues to invest in the pursuit of new knowledge.

China recently launched the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, or HXMT. A hard X-ray has higher energy than a soft X-ray, presumably because it makes a harder collision when it hits an atom. Also, the telescope can detect a multitude of X-ray energies in objects.

The purpose of the HMXT is to search for new compact stellar objects, such as neutron stars or black holes.

Because of the immense gravity surrounding these objects, in-falling gas gets heated to high temperatures, causing the gas to emit X-rays. By studying the X-ray spectrum, astronomers can compare observations to theoretical predictions from a physical model, thus deducing what kind of compact object it is.

There are all-sky surveys in the optical and radio wavelengths, but there has not yet been such a survey at X-ray wavelengths. This is partly because X-rays from space do not penetrate our atmosphere and partly because previous X-ray space telescopes had small angular coverage so that it would take forever to do the whole sky.

The HXMT has a different design than previous X-ray space telescopes, using a different technique to filter out X-rays that are not parallel to the viewing direction. This allows the X-ray detector to increase its angular coverage. An all-sky survey has the potential to find many new neutron stars and black holes, as well as the potential for finding new objects.

This new telescope is yet another indication that China is catching up to, and in some ways, exceeding the science programs in the United States and Europe. This is good for science in general, which today is a global effort, but I do find myself wondering why China has invested so heavily in science when the U.S. government seems to be cutting back?

I can only speculate the reasons, but my guess is that China understands the connection between basic research and a robust economy. Advances in science lead to advances in technology, which in turn provides the basis of electronic gadgets (and other things) to sell.

Another reason to invest in science, including astronomy, is that the search for new knowledge stimulates the imagination of young students. These students can see themselves making new discoveries. This both motivates and gets them thinking in creative ways.

Some of these students will go on to academic careers, but most go to work for companies that develop new products. In the process, their innovative skills have been honed, which is good for industry.

There might be another reason why China is so interested in developing a space program. China sent a few other smaller satellites up with the HXMT.

One was an Earth-observing (optical and infrared) satellite from Argentina, which can provide high-resolutions images of the ground for public viewing.

Two other satellites are operated by Zhuhai Orbita Control Engineering, which is based in China. They also are high-resolutions optical Earth-pointing devices with good enough resolution to see any object on the ground larger than 6 feet.

So dont look now, but a Chinese satellite might be watching you as you drive around in your car.

Meanwhile, the American company SpaceX, which has a spotty record, just delayed its planned launch of a Bulgarian satellite. Maybe the Bulgarians will go to China for their next launch.

Kenneth Hicks is a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio University in Athens.

hicks@ohio.edu

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Astronomy: Chinese telescope illustrates that country's science investment - The Columbus Dispatch