अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान – Page 8 – आवारा मुसाफिर

ESO captures the ghost of a giant star

November 1, 2022150 Views

Eerie image shows spectacular aftermath of a large star's death The aftermath of a large star's explosive death is seen in an image released on Monday by the European Southern Observatory, showing immense filaments of brightly shining gas that was blasted into space during the supernova. Before exploding at the end of its life cycle, the star is believed to have had a mass at least eight times greater than our sun. It was located in our Milky Way galaxy about 800 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Vela. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This image shows a view of the orange and pink clouds that make up what remains after the explosive death of a massive star - the Vela supernova remnant. This imag...

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NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation

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October 25, 2022789 Views

Near-infrared light uncovers vast populations of forming stars, many still encased in dust NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear – at times – semi-transparent in near-infrared light. This image of the Pillars of Creation, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. It lies within the Eagle Nebula, which is also known as Messier 16 (M16). The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the s...

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Heaviest element yet detected in an exoplanet atmosphere

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October 15, 2022263 Views

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered the heaviest element ever found in an exoplanet atmosphere — barium. They were surprised to discover barium at high altitudes in the atmospheres of the ultra-hot gas giants WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b — two exoplanets, planets which orbit stars outside our Solar System. This unexpected discovery raises questions about what these exotic atmospheres may be like. This artist’s impression shows an ultra-hot exoplanet, a planet beyond our Solar System, as it is about to transit in front of its host star. When the light from the star passes through the planet’s atmosphere, it is filtered by the chemical elements and molecules in the gaseous layer. With sensitive instruments, the signatures of...

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Black Hole spews out material years after shredding star

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October 14, 2022509 Views

Scientists say, no one has ever seen anything like this before In October 2018, a small star was ripped to shreds when it wandered too close to a black hole in a galaxy located 665 million light years away from Earth. Though it may sound thrilling, the event did not come as a surprise to astronomers who occasionally witness these violent incidents while scanning the night sky. But nearly three years after the massacre, the same black hole is lighting up the skies again — and it hasn’t swallowed anything new, scientists say. “This caught us completely by surprise — no one has ever seen anything like this before,” says Yvette Cendes, a research associate at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and lead author of a new study analyzing the phenomenon. Arti...

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SpaceX to take entrepreneur Dennis Tito on Starship around the moon

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October 12, 2022355 Views

Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX said on Wednesday that the world's first space tourist Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko have signed up to fly around the moon on the space exploration firm's Starship rocket. Engineer turned financial analyst Tito, 82, was the first private individual to pay for a trip to space on Russia's Soyuz TM-32 mission in 2001, when he spent nearly eight days aboard the International Space Station. The SpaceX flight's roughly week-long journey will see the rocket travel within 200 kilometers of the moon without landing on its surface. FILE PHOTO : Starship prototypes are pictured at the SpaceX South Texas launch site near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., May 22, 2022. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas Tito and his wife are the first crewmembers to be announced for Stars...

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Potential First Traces of the Universe’s Earliest Stars

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October 2, 2022190 Views

Gemini observation of distant quasar uncovers evidence of first-generation star that died in ‘super-supernova’ explosion The very first stars likely formed when the Universe was only 100 million years old, less than one percent its current age. These first stars — known as Population III — were so titanically massive that when they ended their lives as supernovae they tore themselves apart, seeding interstellar space with a distinctive blend of heavy elements. Despite decades of diligent searching by astronomers, however, there has been no direct evidence of these primordial stars, until now. By analyzing one of the most distant known quasars using the Gemini North telescope, one of the two identical telescopes that make up the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s N...

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Astronomers detect hot gas bubble swirling around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

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September 24, 2022192 Views

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have spotted signs of a ‘hot spot’ orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The finding helps us better understand the enigmatic and dynamic environment of our supermassive black hole. “We think we're looking at a hot bubble of gas zipping around Sagittarius A* on an orbit similar in size to that of the planet Mercury, but making a full loop in just around 70 minutes. This requires a mind blowing velocity of about 30% of the speed of light!” says Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, who led the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. This shows a still image of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, as seen by the Event Hori...

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New Webb image captures clearest view of Neptune’s rings in decades

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September 22, 2022274 Views

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet's rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking in Webb's new image is the crisp view of the planet's rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA's Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter dust bands. Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image of Neptune, taken on July 12, 2022, brings the planet’s rings into full focus for the first time in more than three decades. IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI "It has been ...

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It’s a planet: New evidence of Baby Planet in the making

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September 15, 2022178 Views

Astronomers agree that planets are born in protoplanetary disks — rings of dust and gas that surround young, newborn stars. While hundreds of these disks have been spotted throughout the universe, observations of actual planetary birth and formation have proved difficult within these environments. Now, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed a new way to detect these elusive newborn planets — and with it, “smoking gun” evidence of a small Neptune or Saturn-like planet lurking in a disk. The results are described today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Directly detecting young planets is very challenging and has so far only been successful in one or two cases,” says Feng Long, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics who ...

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Dark Energy Camera captures bright, young stars blazing inside glowing Nebula

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September 13, 2022444 Views

To celebrate 10 years of discovery, the DOE-built DECam unveils thousands of stars shining in and around the Lobster Nebula The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, is celebrating 10 years as one of the highest-performance, wide-field CCD imagers in the world. To help commemorate DECam’s first decade of operation, NOIRLab has released a breathtaking image of the star-forming Lobster Nebula (NGC 6357), which is located about 8000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Scorpius. This image reveals bright, young stars surrounded by billowing clouds of dust and gas. At the center of the nebula, which spans about 400 light-years, resides the ...