Wednesday 6 January 2016

'Seeing' black holes with the naked eye

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All you need is a 20 cm telescope to observe a nearby, active black hole. An international research team reports that the activity of black holes can be observed as visible light during outbursts, and that flickering light emerging from gases surrounding black holes is a direct indicator of this. New results indicate that optical rays and not just X-rays provide reliable observational data for black hole activity.
via Science Daily
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'Twins' of superstar Eta Carinae found in other galaxies

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Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system located within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is best known for an enormous eruption seen in the mid-19th century that hurled an amount of material at least 10 times the sun's mass into space. Still shrouded by this expanding veil of gas and dust, Eta Carinae is the only object of its kind known in our galaxy. Now a study using archival data from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes has found five similar objects in other galaxies for the first time.
via Science Daily
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Globular clusters could host interstellar civilizations

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Globular star clusters are extraordinary in almost every way. They're densely packed, holding a million stars in a ball only about 100 light-years across on average. They're old, dating back almost to the birth of the Milky Way. And according to new research, they also could be extraordinarily good places to look for space-faring civilizations.
via Science Daily
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Black hole affecting galactic climate identified

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Researchers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, launched and deployed in 1999 by Space Shuttle Columbia, to identify a powerful galactic blast produced by a giant black hole about 26 million light years from Earth. The black hole is the nearest supermassive black hole to Earth that is currently undergoing such violent outbursts.
via Science Daily
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Physics professor using 3-D map of the Milky Way to determine its star formation rate

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Researchers have been trying to locate all massive star formation regions and to determine where they are in the galaxy, creating a three-dimensional map of where our galaxy is forming massive stars.
via Science Daily
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NASA's Spitzer, Hubble Find 'Twins' of Superstar Eta Carinae in Other Galaxies


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Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system located within 10,000 light-years of Earth, is best known for an enormous eruption seen in the mid-19th century that hurled an amount of material at least 10 times the suns mass into space. Still shrouded by this expanding veil of gas and dust, Eta Carinae is the only object of its kind known in our galaxy. Now a study using archival data from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes has found five similar objects in other galaxies for the first time.


via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/01/

Comets and Bright Star

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This timely, telescopic, two panel mosaic spans about 10 full moons across planet Earth's predawn skies. Recorded as the year began from Tenerife, Canary Islands, near the top of the frame are the faint coma and tail of Comet Borrelly (P/19). A comet with a seven year orbital period, Borrelly's nucleus was visited by the ion propelled spacecraft Deep Space 1 near the beginning of the 21st century. Anchoring the scene at the bottom is brilliant star Arcturus (Alpha Bootes) and Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) a first time visitor from the Oort Cloud. Catalina's yellowish dust tail extends below and right. Buffeted by winds and storms from the Sun, the comet's complex ion tail sweeps up and toward the right, across most of the field of view. Remarkably, one of the composition's 30 second exposure subframes also caught the trail of a bright meteor, slashing toward the left between comets and bright star.

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