Astrophysics – आवारा मुसाफिर

Black Hole spews out material years after shredding star

October 14, 2022543 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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Baby stars, dancing galaxies: A new range of cosmic views

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July 13, 2022285 Views

A sparkling landscape of baby stars. A foamy blue and orange view of a dying star. Five galaxies in a cosmic dance. The splendors of the universe glowed in a new batch of images released Tuesday from NASA’s powerful new telescope. The unveiling from the James Webb Space Telescope began Monday at the White House with a sneak peek of the first shot — a jumble of distant galaxies that went deeper into the cosmos than humanity has ever seen. Two full-color images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe, show composites made from images at Mid-Infrared (L) & Near-Infrared (R) and released July 12, 2022. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team/Handout via REUTERS Then on Tuesday, NASA ...

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Meet the ‘zombie star’ that survived a supernova blast

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June 29, 2022199 Views

Astronomers have observed in a relatively nearby galaxy a star that not only survived what ordinarily should have been certain death - a stellar explosion called a supernova - but emerged from it brighter than before the blast. Meet the "zombie star." The star at issue, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope, is a kind known as a white dwarf, an incredibly dense object with about the mass of the sun crammed into the size of Earth. A white dwarf is the remaining core of a star that blew off a lot of its material at the end of its life cycle, as our sun is expected to do about 5 billion years from now. A 2005 image of the spiral galaxy NGC 1309, the location of a star explosion – a supernova - that did not result in stellar death. NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STSCI/AURA),...

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Hubble sheds light on origins of supermassive Black Holes

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April 18, 2022785 Views

Astronomers have identified a rapidly growing black hole in the early universe that is considered a crucial "missing link" between young star-forming galaxies and the first supermassive black holes. They used data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make this discovery. Until now, the monster, nicknamed GNz7q, had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky, the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-North) field. Archival Hubble data from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys helped the team determine that GNz7q existed just 750 million years after the big bang. The team obtained evidence that GNz7q is a newly formed black hole. Hubble found a compact source of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared light. This couldn't be caused by emission from ...

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World’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve created

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April 8, 20221130 Views

McDonald Observatory, Community Partners come together to form 15,000 sq miles reserve The world’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve is coming to Texas and Mexico, thanks to a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and many others. The designation, granted by the IDA, recognizes the commitment of organizations, governments, businesses and residents in the region to maintaining dark skies. The move will benefit not only astronomical research, but also wildlife, ecology and tourism. The new Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve will encompass more than 15,000 square miles in portions of western Texas and northern Mexico. It is the only such reserve to cross an int...

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Scientists have spotted the farthest Galaxy ever

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April 7, 2022297 Views

Offers clues about the primordial universe An international team of astronomers, including researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, has spotted the most distant astronomical object ever: a galaxy. Named HD1, the galaxy candidate is some 13.5 billion light-years away and is described in the Astrophysical Journal. In an accompanying paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, scientists have begun to speculate exactly what the galaxy is. The team proposes two ideas: HD1 may be forming stars at an astounding rate and is possibly even home to Population III stars, the universe’s very first stars — which, until now, have never been observed. Alternatively, HD1 may contain a supermassive black hole about 100 million t...

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New planet detected around star closest to the Sun

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February 12, 2022779 Views

A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest yet discovered orbiting this star. At just a quarter of Earth’s mass, the planet is also one of the lightest exoplanets ever found. “The discovery shows that our closest stellar neighbour seems to be packed with interesting new worlds, within reach of further study and future exploration,” explains João Faria, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Portugal and lead author of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Su...

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Second alien moon identified is much like the first: big and strange

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January 13, 2022570 Views

For only the second time, astronomers have detected what appears to be a moon orbiting a planet in another solar system. Just like the first time, this one has traits suggesting that such moons may differ greatly from those populating our solar system. Data obtained by NASA's Kepler space telescope before it was retired in 2018 indicated the presence of a moon 2.6 times the diameter of Earth orbiting a Jupiter-sized gas giant about 5,700 light-years away from our solar system in the direction of the Cygnus and Lyra constellations, scientists said on Thursday. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). An artist's rendering shows a moon with a diameter roughly 2.6 times that of Earth orbiting a large gas giant planet in another sola...

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1,000-Light-Year wide bubble surrounding Earth is source of all nearby, young stars

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January 13, 2022271 Views

The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars — but how did those stars form? In a paper appeared in Nature on Wednesday, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) reconstruct the evolutionary history of our galactic neighborhood, showing how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago led to the creation of a vast bubble that’s responsible for the formation of all nearby, young stars. “This is really an origin story; for the first time we can explain how all nearby star formation began,” says astronomer and data visualization expert Catherine Zucker who completed the work during a fellowship at the CfA. The paper’s central figure, a 3D spacetime a...

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Hanle in Ladakh to be declared as ‘dark sky sanctuary’

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October 30, 20211453 Views

The Union Territory administration in Ladakh will be declaring Hanle as a 'dark sky sanctuary' in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics to promote astro-tourism in the region, a senior official has said. A dark sky sanctuary promotes proper illumination where and when it is needed without wasting energy and polluting other areas, especially the night sky, which does not require illumination. Principal Secretary (Planning, Development and Monitoring Department), Ladakh, Pawan Kotwal made the announcement during a high-level meeting convened to discuss the streamlining of certain activities in the protected and wildlife areas. Hanle, which is home to the world's highest astronomical observatory, is located in the Hanle river valley on an old branch of the anci...