|
|
Supernova Blast Bonanza in N
…
| Title |
Supernova Blast Bonanza in Nearby Galaxy |
|
A Bright Supernova in the Ne
…
| Title |
A Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403 |
|
A Bright Supernova in the Ne
…
| Title |
A Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403 |
|
A Bright Supernova in the Ne
…
| Title |
A Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403 |
|
A Bright Supernova in the Ne
…
| Title |
A Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403 |
|
Host Galaxy Cluster to Large
…
| Title |
Host Galaxy Cluster to Largest Known Radio Eruption |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. This is a new composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. The three views of the region were taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in Feb. 2006, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in Nov. 2003, and NRAO's Very Large Array in Oct. 2004. The Hubble image shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. In Jan. 2005, astronomers reported that a supermassive black hole, lurking in the central bright galaxy, generated the most powerful outburst seen in the universe. The VLA radio image shows jets of high energy particles (in red) streaming from the black hole. These jets pushed the X-ray emitting hot gas (shown in blue in the Chandra image) aside to create two giant cavities in the gas. The cavities are evidence for the massive eruption. The X-ray and radio images show the enormous appetite of large black holes and the profound impact they have on their surroundings. |
|
Host Galaxy Cluster to Large
…
| Title |
Host Galaxy Cluster to Largest Known Radio Eruption |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. This is a new composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. The three views of the region were taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in Feb. 2006, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in Nov. 2003, and NRAO's Very Large Array in Oct. 2004. The Hubble image shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. In Jan. 2005, astronomers reported that a supermassive black hole, lurking in the central bright galaxy, generated the most powerful outburst seen in the universe. The VLA radio image shows jets of high energy particles (in red) streaming from the black hole. These jets pushed the X-ray emitting hot gas (shown in blue in the Chandra image) aside to create two giant cavities in the gas. The cavities are evidence for the massive eruption. The X-ray and radio images show the enormous appetite of large black holes and the profound impact they have on their surroundings. |
|
Host Galaxy Cluster to Large
…
| Title |
Host Galaxy Cluster to Largest Known Radio Eruption |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. This is a new composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. The three views of the region were taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in Feb. 2006, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in Nov. 2003, and NRAO's Very Large Array in Oct. 2004. The Hubble image shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. In Jan. 2005, astronomers reported that a supermassive black hole, lurking in the central bright galaxy, generated the most powerful outburst seen in the universe. The VLA radio image shows jets of high energy particles (in red) streaming from the black hole. These jets pushed the X-ray emitting hot gas (shown in blue in the Chandra image) aside to create two giant cavities in the gas. The cavities are evidence for the massive eruption. The X-ray and radio images show the enormous appetite of large black holes and the profound impact they have on their surroundings. |
|
Host Galaxy Cluster to Large
…
| Title |
Host Galaxy Cluster to Largest Known Radio Eruption |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. This is a new composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. The three views of the region were taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in Feb. 2006, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in Nov. 2003, and NRAO's Very Large Array in Oct. 2004. The Hubble image shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. In Jan. 2005, astronomers reported that a supermassive black hole, lurking in the central bright galaxy, generated the most powerful outburst seen in the universe. The VLA radio image shows jets of high energy particles (in red) streaming from the black hole. These jets pushed the X-ray emitting hot gas (shown in blue in the Chandra image) aside to create two giant cavities in the gas. The cavities are evidence for the massive eruption. The X-ray and radio images show the enormous appetite of large black holes and the profound impact they have on their surroundings. |
|
BZ Cam Bow Shock
| Title |
BZ Cam Bow Shock |
| Explanation |
BZ Cam is a binary star system [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991219.html ] that is not well understood. In most cataclysmic variables [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/cataclysmic_variables.html ], matter from a normal star [ http://www.astro.umd.edu/education/astro/stev/main_seq.html ] accumulates on the surface of the companion white dwarf [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/white_dwarfs.html ] star, eventually causing a nova [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970925.html ]-like flare as the material becomes hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion [ http://www.sciam.com/specialissues/0398cosmos/0398starrfield.html ]. In BZ Cam [ http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJ/journal/issues/v115n1/970389/970389.html ], however, light appears to flicker unpredictably, and an unusually large wind [ http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wsolwind.html ] of particles is being expelled. Pictured above [ http://www.to.astro.it/Orio/uno.html ], BZ Cam [ http://www.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/VSOLJ/1995/index/CAMBZ.html ]'s wind creates a large bow-shock [ http://www.windows.ucar.edu/glossary/bow_shock.html ] as the system moves through surrounding interstellar gas [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000411.html ]. BZ Cam [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1996AJ....111.2422P ] lies about 2500 light-years [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cosmic_distance.html ] away toward the constellation [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html ] of Camelopardalis [ http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/cam.html ]. |
|
Hidden Galaxy IC 342 from Ki
…
| Title |
Hidden Galaxy IC 342 from Kitt Peak |
| Explanation |
Beautiful nearby spiral galaxy IC 342 could be more famous if it wasn't so hidden. A sprawling island universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051222.html ], IC 342 would be a prominent galaxy in our night sky [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060413.html ], but it is almost hidden from view behind the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060801.html ]. Similar [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060707.html ] in size to other large, bright spiral galaxies IC 342 [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/LG/i0342.html ] is a mere 7 million light-years [ http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question19.html ] distant in the long-necked, northern constellation of the Giraffe (Camelopardalis [ http://www.coldwater.k12.mi.us/lms/planetarium/myth/ camelopardalis.html ]). Even though IC 342's light is dimmed by intervening cosmic clouds [ http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/ism/what1.html ], this remarkably sharp telescopic image [ http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im1032.html ] traces the galaxy's own obscuring dust [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070606.html ], blue star clusters [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071118.html ], and glowing pink star forming region [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070506.html ]s along spiral arms that wind far from the galaxy's core [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041227.html ]. IC 342 [ http://www.astro.spbu.ru/staff/dio/IC342/IC342E.html ] may have undergone a recent burst [ http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305552 ] of star formation activity and is close enough [ http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/xtra/ngc/ maffei1g.html ] to have gravitationally influenced the evolution of the local group [ http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/more/local.html ] of galaxies and the Milky Way. |
|
NGC 1569: Heavy Elements fro
…
| Title |
NGC 1569: Heavy Elements from a Small Galaxy |
| Explanation |
For astronomers, elements other than hydrogen [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010113.html ] and helium [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010120.html ] are sometimes considered to be simply "heavy elements". It's understandable really, because even lumped all together heavy elements make up an exceedingly small fraction [ http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/ composition.html ] of the Universe. Still, heavy elements can profoundly influence galaxy and star formation ... not to mention [ http://www.europhysicsnews.com/full/14/article1/ article1.html ] the formation of planets and people. In this tantalizing [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/1060/index.html ] false-color x-ray image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/whereis.html ], small dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?1569 ] is surrounded by x-ray emitting [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/ ] clouds of gas thousands of light-years across. The gas has recently been observed [ http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0203513 ] to contain significant concentrations of astronomers' heavy elements such as oxygen, silicon, and magnesium, supporting the idea that dwarf galaxies, the most common type of galaxy in the Universe [ http://www.anzwers.org/free/ universe/galgrps.html ], are largely responsible for heavy elements in intergalactic space. A mere 7 million light-years distant toward the long-necked [ http://www.nature-wildlife.com/girtxt.htm ] constellation Camelopardalis [ http://www.dibonsmith.com/cam_con.htm ], NGC 1569 has undergone a recent burst of star formation and stellar supernova explosions [ http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/ supernovae.php ]. The furious cosmic activity [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xmm_lc/edu/ lessons/background-lifecycles.html ] has heated the expanding gas clouds to temperatures of millions of degrees while enriching them with newly synthesized [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011026.html ] heavy elements. |
|
A Supernova in Nearby Galaxy
…
| Title |
A Supernova in Nearby Galaxy NGC 2403 |
| Explanation |
The closest and brightest supernova in over a decade was recorded [ http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/02_TypeIISN.shtml ] just over a month ago in the outskirts of nearby galaxy NGC 2403. Officially tagged SN 2004dj [ http://www.rochesterastronomy.org//sn2004/sn2004dj.html ], the Type IIP [ http://www2.arnes.si/~gljsentvid10/supn1.html ] explosion likely annihilated most of a blue supergiant star [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001222.html ] as central fusion [ http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec14.html ] could no longer hold it up [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/gifcity/msblues.html ]. The supernova [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/snr.html ] can be seen as the bright object in the above image [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/23/ ] in the direction of the arrow. The home galaxy to the supernova, spiral galaxy NGC 2403 [ http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/n2403.html ], is located only 11 million light years [ http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question19.html ] away and is visible with binoculars toward the northern constellation [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html ] of Camelopardalis [ http://www.astronomical.org/portal/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=11 ] (the Giraffe [ http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/giraffe.html ]). The supernova is fading [ http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html ] but still visible with a telescope, once peaking at just brighter than magnitude [ http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/stars/magnitudes.html ] 12. Supernovas [ http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Supernovae.html ] of this type change brightness in a predictable way and may be searched for in the distant universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040309.html ] as distance indicators. |
|
|
