Hubble Space Telescope •

NASA’s Hubble captured “Ghost Light” from ceased galaxies

November 2, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 1 Comment

NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a faint and ghostly glow of stars that were once emitted from galaxies billions of years ago. Since the glow is faint, NASA’s astronomers arrived at the conclusion that these galaxies were ripped apart gravitationally billions of years ago. They also concluded that six galaxies imploded inside a cluster of galaxies stretching over time frame of six billion years.

According to the scientists, the chaos occurred inside a vast collection of nearly 500 galaxies four billion light-years away. This large group of galaxies was nicknamed as ‘Pandora’s Cluster’.

Ignacio Trujillo from The Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias (IAC), Spain’s Santa Cruz de Tenerife, said, “The Hubble data revealing the ghost light are important steps forward in understanding the evolution of galaxy clusters. It is also amazingly beautiful in that we found the telltale glow by utilizing Hubble’s unique capabilities.”

The research group estimated that the combined light of about 200 billion outcast stars contributed to about 10% of the brightness of the cluster.

The measurements by Hubble also depicted that the phantom stars are rich in heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. This brings us to the conclusion that the scattered stars must be second or third generation ones because they are enriched with those elements that are formulated in the hearts of the first generation stars of the universe.

Leaky Galaxy May Fling Some Light On The Universe Evolution

October 11, 2014 By Jason Leathers 3 Comments

About 400 million years ago, the universe was very dark until the first star producing galaxies started to make ultraviolet light, which ultimately lighted up the cosmos.

Recently, NASA-funded research team with grant number 12886 at the Johns Hopkins University discovered a compact galaxy named as J0921+4509. The researchers believed that it possesses similar characteristics needed to lighten up the early universe. It is actually emitting photons with an energy that ionize hydrogen atoms. This galaxy also enables over 20% of its ultraviolet radiation to leak through the dust clouds causing it to emit strong levels of ultraviolet light and providing hints to astronomers on how the earliest galaxies of the universe may have likely behaved.

J0921+4509 is located 2.9 million years away from the Milky Way galaxy. It generates stars in a compact region similar to the rate of budding galaxies of earliest times. Moreover, the galaxy whips around 50 stars having the same mass as the sun every year that is 33 times more than the number of stars that the Milky Way produces for the same period.

Brian Siana, an astronomer from the University of California, Riverside stated that, “That’s quite high. This is roughly the fraction that we think all galaxies in the early universe had to have in order to ionize the hydrogen in the intergalactic medium.”

Thousands of years after the Big Bang, the cosmic scattered protons and electrons started to cool and developed the first atom of hydrogen. The fact ultimately resulted in the creation of hydrogen walls along with the clouds of cosmic dust, which has the ability to absorb ultraviolet radiation. This averted light from fleeing and blotched the dark ages of the universe.

With the passage of time, these radiations become too strong that it re-ionized the hydrogen. It actually happens when the photons gather enough energy in order to break up the electrons from the hydrogen atoms, which resulted in lighting up the previously dark universe. The astronomers think that, the radiation that broke electrons come from stellar births, but they are not sure about that.

Sanchayeeta Borthakur, an astronomer from the Johns Hopkins University stated that, “The galaxies contains star forming regions that are wrapped with cold gases so the radiation won’t come out. If we want to know that how the radiation gets out of the galaxy, we need to learn the mechanisms that ionized the universe.” He further stated that, it seems that the newly discovered galaxy might provide some hints concerning how the early universe lighted up.

Moreover, the researchers have been in a long quest of finding a ‘holey’ galaxy to examine how star-produced radiation plays a role in ionization process. For this purpose, the researchers placed the particular galaxy with the help of radiation leak measurement method and Cosmic Origin Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. As per the statement of researcher’s team “a combination of unusually strong winds, intense radiation and a massive, highly star-forming galaxy” for the validity of the indicator.

Borthakur stated that, “The confirmation of the indicator is key and now people can use this indicator to study distant galaxies at longer wavelengths.”

The study is published in the journal ‘Science’.

Water Vapors Discovered in Clear Skies on Neptune-Sized Exoplanet

September 25, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 12 Comments

According to the Los Angeles Times. Lately, the astronomers invented the signs of clear skies and water vapors on the Neptune Sized exoplanet named as HAT-P-11b. It’s believed to be the smallest planet thus far identified to horde water in its atmosphere. The study has been published in the Journal Nature, symbols a target for scientists seeking out whether such tinniest planets in distant solar systems also have the same atmospheres like Earth.

Finding exoplanets is intricate, but, on the other hand, the examining the molecular contents of their atmospheres is even harder, Astronomers told. The researchers stay for planets to go by in front of their stars to monitor the starlight, which riddles through the transparent gassy shell around the planet’s outline. If they observe any water in that slim atmospheric lining, it would eventually soak up definite wavelengths of the clean light by sending off a chemical fingerprint that astronomers can recognize.

The process is named as ‘Transmission Spectroscopy’, which is not an easy task to handle, astronomers claimed. Until now, researchers have only been proficient in exploring the contents of air surrounding huge planets such as Jupiter, which are quite easier to locate with more wide and extensive atmospheres.

Eliza M.R Kempton (astronomer) at Grinnell Collage of Iowa says, in exoplanet, we are actually searching for water vapor amalgamation in atmosphere in front of star which is just alike to looking for tiny insect passing in front of bright coastal lighthouse lamp.

Astronomers have used their hand for testing the atmosphere of different planets which are smaller than Jupiter while using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. With this, we have examined 4 Neptune sized planets, but their broadcast range was flat, missing informer fingerprints, which means that clouds were in the way.

Team of researchers checked HAT-P-11b planet 120 light years away, in the collection of Cygnus, hit disburse dirt that circles its stars every 5th day. The researchers reported that the transmission signal showed a clear signal of water vapors along with the abundance of water. moreover, they cross checked the results too with the findings of NASA’s Spitzer & Kepler space telescopes in order to make sure that water was not coming sunspot back-lighting the atmosphere. Furthermore, the findings got detained. And they look to correspond with what planetary scientists expect the researchers’ states.

The study author states; the spectrum made is the indication of a planetary atmosphere in which the profusion of heavy elements is not more than 700 times the solar value. This seems to be a good contract with the core-accretion theory of planet formation. In this theory, a gas massive planet obtains its atmosphere by accretion of hydrogen-rich gas straight from the proto-planetary nebula onto a big stony or icy core.” In fact, this Neptune-sized planet has showed the clear signals of skies. The researchers further told that still there is a possibility that even smaller planets will also have relatively cloud-free atmospheres.

Kempton told that, NASA James Webb Space Telescope, which would probably launch in 2018, helps the researchers to better explore the smaller planets. Though, this giant telescope has some of the instruments similar to Hubble’s but it has a much larger mirror which has the capability to catch even faded signals.

Astronomers Discovered Supermassive Black Hole Absorbs Galaxy

September 19, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 1 Comment

As galaxy’s go, the one we live in, The Milky Way, is estimated at being 100,000 light years in width. For the uninitiated a light year is the distance light can travel in one year. Light being the fastest thing in our universe we know of, that means if one had a ship that could travel as fast as light, it would take them 100,000 years to transverse the Milky Way. Not all galaxies are the same as some are different sizes and make up different configurations but it’s often to find a black hole in the middle of a galaxy. Our galaxy has a black hole as big as 4.1 million of our Suns in power.

In the case of a new galaxy studied called M60-UCD1, a dwarf galaxy, is 300 light years in diameter. The surprising thing is the massive black hole found inside this galaxy that is five times the size of the black hole in the center of our galaxy. This suggests similar dwarf galaxies may hold supermassive black holes as well. Scientists speculate that such galaxies like M60-UCD1 may have been part of another galaxy that was stripped of its stars. Perhaps also there may have been collisions of some sort.

Anil Seth, Astronomer, and lead author of the international study of this dwarf galaxy had his findings published on September 18, 2014 in the journal “Nature”. He said in the piece, “We don’t know of any other way you could make a black hole so big in an object this small.”. His team of astronomers utilized the tools of the Hubble Space Telescope and in addition the Gemini North 8-meter optical and infrared telescope located on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to examine M60-UCD1 and get the measurements on the black hole’s mass inside. The Hubble provided images that allowed for estimating the galaxy’s diameter as well as stellar density. The Gemini telescope measured the stellar motions as affected by the pull of the black hole’s gravitational field. This information is compiled to calculate the mass of the black hole.

The discovery of such a galaxy and a supermassive black hole like this allows scientists to postulate on other phenomena found in the universe. Looking at the raw data gathered by telescopes and putting together a team of professional astronomers allows for answering questions that have mystified science for centuries. This discovery opens the doors to new clues as to what we’ll find while exploring the heavens.

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