KREUZADER (Posts tagged astronomy)

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“As NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew through the narrow gap between Jupiter’s radiation belts and the planet during its first science flyby, Perijove 1, on August 27, 2016, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera collected the first image of...

As NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew through the narrow gap between Jupiter’s radiation belts and the planet during its first science flyby, Perijove 1, on August 27, 2016, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera collected the first image of Jupiter’s ring taken from the inside looking out. The bright bands in the center of the image are the main ring of Jupiter’s ring system.

While taking the ring image, the SRU was viewing the constellation Orion. The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right. Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation actively retrieves and analyzes the noise signatures from penetrating radiation in the images of the spacecraft’s star cameras and science instruments at Jupiter.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov
jupiter juno nasa space astronomy

Though we know neutron stars are small and extremely dense, there are still many aspects of these remnants of explosive deaths of other stars that we have yet tounderstand. NICER, a facility to be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, seeks to find the answers to some of the questions still being asked about neutron stars. By capturing the arrival time and energy of the x-ray photons produced by pulsars emitted by neutron stars, NICER seeks answer decades-old questions about extreme forms of matter and energy. Data from NICER will also be used in Sextant, an on-board demonstration of pulsar-based navigation.

astronomy neutron star international space station
Collapsing Star Gives Birth to a Black Hole“Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go...

Collapsing Star Gives Birth to a Black Hole

Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go looking for remnants of the vanquished star, only to find that it disappeared out of sight.

It went out with a whimper instead of a bang.

The star, which was 25 times as massive as our sun, should have exploded in a very bright supernova. Instead, it fizzled out—and then left behind a black hole.

“Massive fails” like this one in a nearby galaxy could explain why astronomers rarely see supernovae from the most massive stars, said Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology.As many as 30 percent of such stars, it seems, may quietly collapse into black holes — no supernova required.

Source: nasa.gov
astronomy black hole
Our galaxy produces 9 trillion kilograms of antimatter a second—how?“Antimatter is rare in this Universe, but the Universe is a pretty big place, so even small quantities can add up fast. In our galaxy alone, there’s a steady bath of radiation that...

Our galaxy produces 9 trillion kilograms of antimatter a second—how?

Antimatter is rare in this Universe, but the Universe is a pretty big place, so even small quantities can add up fast. In our galaxy alone, there’s a steady bath of radiation that indicates positrons are constantly running into their electron anti-partners and annihilating them. Over something the size of a galaxy, that means there are lots of the positrons around. Estimates have it that 9.1 trillion kilograms of antimatter are being destroyed each second.

Where’s it all coming from? We don’t really know, but candidates have included everything from dark matter particles to supermassive black holes. A new paper suggests a relatively unexciting source: a specific class of supernova that produces lots of radioactive titanium, which decays by releasing a positron.

Source: Ars Technica
antimatter milky way astronomy astrophysics
Kepler Star KIC 8462852 Amateur Photometry Monitoring Project “This web page records my observations of KIC 8462852 (hereafter KIC846) in an attempt to measure small amplitude variations on timescales of hours, days and weeks. A secondary goal is to...

Kepler Star KIC 8462852 Amateur Photometry Monitoring Project

This web page records my observations of KIC 8462852 (hereafter KIC846) in an attempt to measure small amplitude variations on timescales of hours, days and weeks. A secondary goal is to begin a multi-year measurement of a suggested gradual decline of 0.34%/year (Montet & Simon, 2016). In support of both goals 25 nearby stars have been calibrated using all-sky photometry.

wow, clear fading trend even in ground observations now

Source: brucegary.net
kic 8462852 astronomy boyajian's star
“@LCO_Global 0.4m data in r’-band shows the new #TabbysStar dip is complex, and it is still dipping! pic.twitter.com/Eu8TYLOUlo — Tabetha Boyajian (@tsboyajian) May 21, 2017” also: “Heres the figure I showed in the livestream summarizing the (public)...

also:

Source: twitter.com
kic 8462852 tabetha boyaijan astronomy boyajian's star

ATel #10405 reports that a several percent dip in the brightness of KIC 8462852 is underway.

We report medium resolution spectroscopy (R=2500) taken with the FRODOSpec fibre fed integral field spectrograph of the 2.0 meter Liverpool Telescope, La Palma obtained on 20th May 2017 starting at 01:20UT.  Three 600 second exposures were obtained, giving a total integration time of 1800 seconds.  The wavelength range was 5800 - 9400 Angstroms.

The spectrum is compared with a reference spectrum obtained “out of dip” on 4th July 2016 with an identical instrumental setup and exposure time.

In an initial analysis we find no difference between the two spectra apart from in features that are attributable to the expected variable telluric absorption features in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Excerpts of the spectra in the region of H-alpha (https://www.dropbox.com/s/u11lv7d5opeo0rr/KIC-halpha.png?dl=0) and the IR Calcium Triplet (https://www.dropbox.com/s/isev1ymggilx4hl/KIC-Ca.png?dl=0) are shown (the different ripples in the two Ca spectra are due to CCD fringing in the detector).  Taking the ratio of the two spectra gives standard deviations per pixel of 2 percent of the continuum level in the H-alpha region and 3 percent in the Calcium triplet region, with no evidence of any changes visible between the two epochs in the lines.

We will continue to monitor the object.

for comparison (from http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2016/09/03/what-could-be-going-on-with-boyajians-star-part-x-wrapup-and-gaias-promise/):

#9 Alien Megastructures: Would find support if all natural hypotheses are ruled out, we detect signals, or if star suffers significant achromatic extinction.

Source: astronomerstelegram.org
kic 8462852 astronomy seti
Hubble Spots Moon Around Third Largest Dwarf Planet“Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a frigid, dark, vast frontier of countless icy bodies left over from the solar system’s construction 4.6 billion years ago. This region, called the Kuiper Belt, was...

Hubble Spots Moon Around Third Largest Dwarf Planet

Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a frigid, dark, vast frontier of countless icy bodies left over from the solar system’s construction 4.6 billion years ago. This region, called the Kuiper Belt, was hypothesized by astronomer Gerard Kuiper in 1951. But it took another four decades for astronomers to confirm its existence. The largest bodies are called dwarf planets, with Pluto being the biggest member. Pluto is so big, in fact, that it was discovered 60 years before other Kuiper worlds were detected. Moons around dwarf planets are elusive, though. Pluto’s moon Charon wasn’t found until the mid-1970s.

Now, astronomers have uncovered a moon around another dwarf planet by using the combined power of three space observatories, including archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Called 2007 OR10, it is the third-largest dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. With this moon’s discovery, most of the known dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt larger than 600 miles across have companions. These bodies provide insight into how moons formed in the young solar system. In fact, there is an emerging view that collisions between planetary bodies can result in the formation of moons. Based on moon rock samples from NASA’s Apollo mission, astronomers believe that Earth’s only natural satellite was born out of a collision with a Mars-sized object 4.4 billion years ago.

Source: hubblesite.org
hubble space telescope astronomy
Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First Light“Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of...

Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First Light

Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of years, even a galaxy’s worth of stars — or unthinkably bright beacons such as those created by supermassive black holes — would have been rendered all but invisible.

Eventually this fog burned off as high-energy ultraviolet light broke the atoms apart in a process called reionization. But the questions of exactly how this happened — which celestial objects powered the process and how many of them were needed — have consumed astronomers for decades.

Source: quantamagazine.org
astronomy astrophysics physics cosmology