अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान – आवारा मुसाफिर

First ever binary star found near our galaxy’s supermassive black hole

December 17, 2024347 Views

An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The discovery, based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A. “Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” says Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the study published today in Nature Communications. Binary stars, pairs of stars orbiting each other, are very common in the Universe, b...

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Astronomers take the first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy

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November 21, 2024341 Views

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. Located a staggering 160 000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 was imaged thanks to the impressive sharpness offered by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). The new observations reveal a star puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova. This is an image of the star WOH G64, taken by the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). The bright oval at the centre of this image is a dusty cocoon that enshrouds the star. A fainter elliptical ring a...

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New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

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October 31, 2024347 Views

For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This collage highlights some details within the huge Dark Wolf Nebula, such as the wolf’s “head”, seen here in the top-centre image. The pillars in the images to the right form when intense radiation from young stars encounters dense pockets of dust and gas. This radiation erodes and blows away the lighter material around these dense pockets, creating these pillar-like structures. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team Found in the constellation Scorp...

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Space oddity: Most distant rotating disc galaxy found

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October 7, 2024408 Views

Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising since, according to our current understanding of galaxy formation, such early galaxies are expected to appear more chaotic. The rotation and structure of REBELS-25 were revealed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. The galaxies we see today have come a long way from their chaotic, clumpy counterparts that astronomers typically observe in the early Universe. “According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small a...

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Scientists discover planet orbiting closest single star to our Sun

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October 1, 2024159 Views

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star. Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system — after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group — and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard's star had been confirmed until now. This ar...

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Most detailed infrared map ever of our Milky Way captured

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September 26, 2024168 Views

Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects ― the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope. “We made so many discoveries, we have changed the view of our Galaxy forever,” says Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile who led the overall project. This image shows the regions of the Milky Way mapped by the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey and its companion project, the VVV eXtended survey (VVVX). The total area covered is equivalent to 8600 full moons...

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A big walk for the Space Tourism

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September 12, 2024169 Views

Spacewalking is the new domain of the super rich as a billionaire makes first private attempt First came space tourism. Now comes an even bigger thrill for the monied masses: spacewalking. A tech billionaire performed the first private spacewalk hundreds of miles above Earth on Thursday, a high-risk endeavor reserved for professional astronauts — until now. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside. This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move acr...

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Webb captures pair of intertwined galaxies glowing in infrared

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July 13, 2024147 Views

The Webb Space Telescope has captured a pair of intertwined galaxies glowing in the infrared. In this photo provided by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute, two interacting galaxies are captured by the Webb Space Telescope in the infrared. Scientists say the neighboring galaxies, nicknamed Penguin, right, and the Egg, left, have been tangled up for tens of millions of years. (NASA and Space Telescope Science Institute via AP) The observatory operated by NASA and the European Space Agency photographed the two galaxies 326 million light-years away, surrounded by a blue haze of stars and gas. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. The pictures, released Friday, marks the second anniversary of Webb’s science operations. The neighboring galaxies, nicknamed Penguin and the E...

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‘Spaceship’ observatory allows stargazers in Cyprus a peek at the final frontier

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July 4, 2024248 Views

A new space observatory in Cyprus looks like it just uncloaked itself on the set of a sci-fi movie and is ready for takeoff. Perched high on the Troodos mountains in the centre of the island and with an unobstructed view of the skies, the 1.77 million euro ($1.90 million) publicly funded Troodos Observatory was inaugurated in May. Purveyors hope the project will encourage visitors to areas increasingly affected by urbanisation and broaden a depth of celestial knowledge. A drone view shows Troodos astronomical observatory in Agridia village, Cyprus June 13, 2024. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou Designed by sci-fi enthusiasts, architects and siblings Elena, Nicodemos and Cassandra Tsolakis, the similarity to a spaceship wasn't intentional but the nature of the project instinctively and ...

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Astronomers see a massive black hole awaken in real time

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June 18, 2024386 Views

In late 2019 the previously unremarkable galaxy SDSS1335+0728 suddenly started shining brighter than ever before. To understand why, astronomers have used data from several space and ground-based observatories, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track how the galaxy’s brightness has varied. In a study out today, they conclude that they are witnessing changes never seen before in a galaxy — likely the result of the sudden awakening of the massive black hole at its core. “Imagine you’ve been observing a distant galaxy for years, and it always seemed calm and inactive,” says Paula Sánchez Sáez, an astronomer at ESO in Germany and lead author of the study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “Suddenly, its [core] starts s...