The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

Titanic Thirty-Meter Telescope 12 x's Hubble To Probe Dark Matter & First Stars

We're building a billion dollar telescope and it isn't just aimed at the stars: it's looking for the first ones. The new Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proves that sometimes bigger really is better and will be elements in the optics allows them all to act as one (which is good because it's impossible to build a real one that big.)  The realtime control also allows astronomers to correct for the effects of the atmosphere - so even though it's on the ground, the TMT will have twelve times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Interstellar Highway Patrol: Stars Racing One-Million MPH Through Milky Way's Halo May Be From Other Galaxies

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Ghosts of Billions of Black Holes Litter the Cosmos: Are They Signs of Other Universes?

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd don't need to suit up for this one. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost," and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The explosion of each super-massive black hole may, according to recent theories, collapse to form a number of new universes.

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd don't need to suit up for this one. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost," and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The explosion of each super-massive black hole may, according to recent theories, collapse to form a number of new universes.

"Vampire Star" May Unlock Clues to Secret of Dark Energy

ESO’s Very Large Telescope has captured the first time-lapse movie of a rare shell ejected by a “vampire star." The gas-sucking star is part of a double star system known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis ("the Stern") that is devouring part of a companion star looks to be a ticking time bomb. It appears that this double star system is a prime candidate to be one of the long-sought progenitors of the exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, critical for studies of dark energy. In November 2000, this system underwent a nova outburst, becoming 250 times brighter than before and ejecting a large quantity of matter into space.

Image of the Day: A Galaxy's Supermassive Engine

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes are standard objects in galaxies with bulges such as the spectacular Seyfert galaxy NGC 4258 shown here. Black holes with masses of a million to a few billion times the mass of the Sun are believed to be the engines that power nuclear activity in galaxies. Some nuclei fire jets of energetic particles millions of light years into space. Almost all astronomers believe that this enormous outpouring of energy comes from the death throes of stars and gas that are falling into the central black hole. A giant black hole in a galactic nucleus exerts a powerful gravitational force on nearby gas and stars, causing them to move at high speeds. 

Jupiter: Earth's Protector or Eventual Destroyer?

Jupiter's been in the news a lot this past summer, as anywhere there's a Pacific-Ocean-sized explosion tends to be.  The recent impact (and detonation) of an asteroid against the gas giant's hide has triggered the usual flurry of discussion with the planet cast as everything from cosmic protector to vengeful heavenly killer (both believable aspects of Jupiter, the god the Romans ripped off from the Greeks, but less so for the actual solar system object).  Both miss the real answer: it's just there, and sometimes things just happen.

Image of the Day: "The Gemini Twins"

 

Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive as the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are not likely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides. Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. The Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years.

Rosetta Space Mystery Could Be a Clue to New Laws of the Universe

Scientists are eagerly anticipating the ROSETTA probe's next pass of Earth, because they know that something they don't know about might happen.  Probes passing by Earth to pick up a gravitational slingshot have been experiencing unexplained extra accelerations, and the reasons could reveal fundamental facts of existence - if we ever work them out.

Image of the Day: Earth's Night from Space

The OSIRIS science team led by Dr Horst Uwe Keller at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research captured an awesome composite image showing both the illuminated crescent of the Earth together with the cities of the northern hemisphere. The images were acquired with the OSIRIS wide-angle camera.

Image of the Day: The "Bubble" Galaxy

  

The bubble forming in the center of NGC 3079 by particles streaming at high speeds (see image below), which were in turn caused by a large burst of star formation, is believed to be about 3000 light-years wide and to rise more than 3500 light-years above the disc of the galaxy.

Titanic Thirty-Meter Telescope 12 x's Hubble To Probe Dark Matter & First Stars

We're building a billion dollar telescope and it isn't just aimed at the stars: it's looking for the first ones. The new Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proves that sometimes bigger really is better and will be elements in the optics allows them all to act as one (which is good because it's impossible to build a real one that big.)  The realtime control also allows astronomers to correct for the effects of the atmosphere - so even though it's on the ground, the TMT will have twelve times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Interstellar Highway Patrol: Stars Racing One-Million MPH Through Milky Way's Halo May Be From Other Galaxies

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Ghosts of Billions of Black Holes Litter the Cosmos: Are They Signs of Other Universes?

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd don't need to suit up for this one. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost," and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The explosion of each super-massive black hole may, according to recent theories, collapse to form a number of new universes.

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd don't need to suit up for this one. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost," and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The explosion of each super-massive black hole may, according to recent theories, collapse to form a number of new universes.

"Vampire Star" May Unlock Clues to Secret of Dark Energy

ESO’s Very Large Telescope has captured the first time-lapse movie of a rare shell ejected by a “vampire star." The gas-sucking star is part of a double star system known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis ("the Stern") that is devouring part of a companion star looks to be a ticking time bomb. It appears that this double star system is a prime candidate to be one of the long-sought progenitors of the exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, critical for studies of dark energy. In November 2000, this system underwent a nova outburst, becoming 250 times brighter than before and ejecting a large quantity of matter into space.

Image of the Day: A Galaxy's Supermassive Engine

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes are standard objects in galaxies with bulges such as the spectacular Seyfert galaxy NGC 4258 shown here. Black holes with masses of a million to a few billion times the mass of the Sun are believed to be the engines that power nuclear activity in galaxies. Some nuclei fire jets of energetic particles millions of light years into space. Almost all astronomers believe that this enormous outpouring of energy comes from the death throes of stars and gas that are falling into the central black hole. A giant black hole in a galactic nucleus exerts a powerful gravitational force on nearby gas and stars, causing them to move at high speeds. 

Jupiter: Earth's Protector or Eventual Destroyer?

Jupiter's been in the news a lot this past summer, as anywhere there's a Pacific-Ocean-sized explosion tends to be.  The recent impact (and detonation) of an asteroid against the gas giant's hide has triggered the usual flurry of discussion with the planet cast as everything from cosmic protector to vengeful heavenly killer (both believable aspects of Jupiter, the god the Romans ripped off from the Greeks, but less so for the actual solar system object).  Both miss the real answer: it's just there, and sometimes things just happen.

Image of the Day: "The Gemini Twins"

 

Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive as the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are not likely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides. Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. The Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years.

Rosetta Space Mystery Could Be a Clue to New Laws of the Universe

Scientists are eagerly anticipating the ROSETTA probe's next pass of Earth, because they know that something they don't know about might happen.  Probes passing by Earth to pick up a gravitational slingshot have been experiencing unexplained extra accelerations, and the reasons could reveal fundamental facts of existence - if we ever work them out.

Image of the Day: Earth's Night from Space

The OSIRIS science team led by Dr Horst Uwe Keller at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research captured an awesome composite image showing both the illuminated crescent of the Earth together with the cities of the northern hemisphere. The images were acquired with the OSIRIS wide-angle camera.

Image of the Day: The "Bubble" Galaxy

  

The bubble forming in the center of NGC 3079 by particles streaming at high speeds (see image below), which were in turn caused by a large burst of star formation, is believed to be about 3000 light-years wide and to rise more than 3500 light-years above the disc of the galaxy.