Clipmarks | pokkets's 'astronomy' clips

50 Billion Suns! -The Biggest Single Object in the Universe

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:17:51 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe, and they don't appear in the Oprah studio audience.

New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes - and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. That's a hundred thousand tredagrams, and you'll never get the chance to use that word in relation to anything else.

While there's theoretically no upper limit on how big a black hole can be, there are hard limits on how big they could have become by now. The universe has only existed for a finite amount of time, and even the most voracious black hole can only suck in matter at a certain rate. The bigger the black hole, the bigger the gravitational field and the faster it can pull in matter - but that same huge gravitational gradient means that the same matter can release huge amounts of radiation as it falls, blasting other matter further away.

Tags: astronomy, cosmology

Telescope spots monster galactic cluster

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:08:22 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They theorize that the fact that it's 7.7 billion light years away (as far as they know) meant that it was before the acceleration due to dark energy made it impossible for galactic clusters that large to hold together.
It reminded me of a poem by Hughes Mearns.
'Antigonish'
As I was going up the stair,
I saw a star that wasn’t there.
It wasn’t there again today,
I wish, that star would stay away.
(I thought I'd adjust it to cover Light years, and dark matter.)

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

A massive cluster of galaxies in deep space imaged spotted by an orbiting observatory can only be explained by the exotic phenomenon known as dark energy, say astronomers.

The huge galactic cluster, which appears as a blue cloud in this image, may help confirm the existence of dark energy

The observation was made by a team led by Georg Lamer of the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute, Germany, using the European Space Agency's (ESA) orbiting x-ray telescope XMM-Newton.

Their findings will appear in

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Intrigued by the indicators of scorching gases spewed out by x-ray sources, the team followed up by obtaining a deep exposure image of the region from a large binocular telescope in the Arizona desert.

Known by its catalogue number of 2XMM J083026+524133, the cluster's mass is about 1000 times that of our own galaxy and lies 7.7 billion light years from earth

in more recent times, massive galaxy clusters have lacked the gravitational glue to be able to form

Moon transits Earth

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:58:34 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Clip Source: www.ridingwithrobots.org

The moon transits the Earth in a series of images taken recently by the Epoxi spacecraft from 31 million miles away in deep space. Viewing the Earth from such large distances provides good practice for remote sensing of alien worlds. Epoxi is the extended astronomy mission that is using the spacecraft from the Deep Impact comet-smashing expedition of 2005. Epoxi will also fly by comet Hartley 2 in 2010. Learn more.

Hubble unveils colorful star birth region on 100,000th orbit milestone

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:58:53 GMT

clipped by: tabsey

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

In commemoration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulphur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen and blue from glowing oxygen. Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Livio (STScI)

Tags: astronomy

Galaxy's second brightest star found

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:31:58 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Second to Eta Carina. If you've ever seen pictures of that you'd know second brightest isn't too bad.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Larry O'Hanlon

If you can't be the brightest star out of 100 billion, second brightest isn't bad - especially when you're one of the most dangerous.

That's just what astronomers have found, hidden in a flowery dust cloud near the centre of the Milky Way, according to their paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Named the 'Peony Nebula' star, it has been calculated to be as bright as 3.2 million suns. That's approaching the supremacy of the brightest known star in the galaxy, Eta Carina, which blazes at 4.7 million times our sun's light output.

The newfound super-bright star also takes on the mantle of perhaps being the second-most massive star in the galaxy, starting its life at more than 1000 times the mass of our sun. That's because stellar mass and brightness rise in tandem.

super-giant stars are very rare in the universe today. What's more, they live only a fraction as long as smaller stars - just a billion years compared to six billion or more.

World's nine largest science projects

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:40:08 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: Interesting and simply put...

Clip Source: www.discoverychannel.ca

The world's nine largest science projects

1. Large Hadron collider at CERN

world's largest science project

was unveiled to unearth the so-called "God particle"

2. Next-stop, cold fusion?: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

built in southern France and promises to deliver the world's first sustained fusion reactions;

3. The finished International Space Station, circa 2011

the International Space Station will be the largest multinational engineering project of all time.

4. A 3,000-foot-tall "Solar tower" in the Australian outback

Dubbed the "Solar Mission Project", this scientific feat takes solar energy to new heights.

5. The largest-scale climate-change simulator on Earth

using the idle computer time of thousands of volunteers to crunch climate-change data.

6. James Webb Space Telescope

will launch into an ultra-high orbit 1.5 million km from Earth (compare that to the 500 km Hubble

7. The Svalbard "Doomsday" Seed Vault

8. Space elevator

ANTARES

Honorable mention

Tags: science, space exploration, nuclear physics, fission, fusion, solar power, astronomy, telescope

Dozens of 'Super Earths' Found

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:25:21 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The recent batch of exoplanets were all spotted with the High-Accuracy Radial-Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a 3.6-meter telescope and spectograph perched atop La Scilla mountain at the southern edge of Chile's Atacama Desert.

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

June 16, 2008 -- European astronomers on Monday said they had located dozens of giant planets in three distant solar systems.

The discovery suggests that at least one third of stars similar to our own sun harbor such planets, multiplying previous estimates by five.

A trio of these 'super-Earths' -- so-called because they are several times the mass of our own planet -- were detected orbiting a star known as HD 40307 some 42 light-years away.

"Does every single star harbor planets and, if yes, how many?" asked astronomer Michel Mayor of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory. "We may not yet know the answer but we are making huge progress," he said in a statement.

The first planet outside our solar system was detected in 1995, and less than 280 of these exoplanets had been found before today's findings, unveiled at an astronomy conference in Nantes, France.

But a new generation of powerful instruments is almost certain to expand the list rapidly, say scientists.

Hubble Deep Field-The Most Important Image Ever Taken

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:42:44 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Astronomy is full of big numbers, that are way beyond what our brains are designed to imagine. This video, dedicated to Carl Sagan, uses the Hubble Deep Field image, to show why it's so hard to get the universe into perspective.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Missing Matter Spotted by European Probe

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:06:28 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

An orbital X-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter whose existence had long been theorized, but evidence for which had been lacking, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.

Twin Galaxy Clusters

The discovery made by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which comprises less than five percent of the cosmos.

Most of the universe consists of matter and energy of an unknown nature, which astrophysicists call "dark matter." It is believed to be distributed in a web-like structure.

The new claim is based on the observation of a pair of distant galaxy clusters, called Abell 222 and Abell 223, located 2.3 billion light-years from Earth.

Tags: science, astronomy, discovery

Found ! Missing matter in finger of gas

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:08:11 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

An orbital x-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter in the universe whose existence had long been theorised but evidence for which had been lacking, researchers say.

The two clusters of galaxies Abell 222 and Abell 223 are connected by a filament of so-called warm-hot intergalactic medium, gas that could be part of the universe's missing baryonic matter

The discovery made by European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which makes up less than 5% of the cosmos

The Dutch and German research is published by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters

Most of the universe consists of matter and energy of an unknown nature, which astrophysicists call 'dark' and that's believed to be distributed in a web-like structure

Dark energy

accounts for some 72% the total, and dark matter, heavy particles still waiting to be discovered, accounts for around 23%

That leaves just 5% to comprise normal, or baryonic, matter

the category for

protons

neutrons

and electrons

Black hole captured mid belch

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:36:59 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Julie Steenhuysen

Scientists say they have captured a supermassive black hole just as it was belching out a jet of supercharged particles, offering a first look at how these cosmic jets form.

Twisted magnetic fields propel and shape this jet of particles from a supermassive black hole

Supermassive black holes form the core of many galaxies and astronomers have long believed they are responsible for ejecting jets of particles at nearly the speed of light.

But just how they do it has remained a mystery.

researchers led by Professor Alan Marscher of Boston University

Marscher's team aimed the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array, a system of 10 radio telescopes, at the galaxy BL Lacertae

What they saw was a close up of this charged material winding in corkscrew fashion out of the supermassive black hole, behaving just as astronomers have predicted

We have gotten the clearest look yet at the innermost portion of the jet, where the particles actually are accelerated

Astronomers delight at red sky at night

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:37:44 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They don't just want to know how many stars ,galaxies, and nebulae are out there, they want to give them all names

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Dani Cooper

Stunning pictures of nebulae have been captured as part of the first optical digital survey of the northern section of the Milky Way.

More than 50 astronomers worldwide, including Associate Professor Quentin Parker of the Anglo-Australian Observatory, have been tracking light emitted by hydrogen ions.

They used the wide-field camera on the 2.5 metre Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

200 million objects have been catalogued as part of the so-called IPHAS survey, which was conducted over 212 nights between September 2003 and December 2005

results are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and online as a result of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance

targeting the hydrogen marker the group was able to look at some of the "least understood stars in the galaxy, those in the early and very late stages of their life cycles".

This is a substantial and significant survey which aims to eventually contain 700-800 million objects

Tags: astronomy, survey, sky, stars, milky way, digital

Found ! 'Missing link' brown dwarf

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:28:57 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Scientists have often wondered how big a gas cloud had to be, before the collapse due to it's own gravity would turn it from a large planet into a small star. They have found gas giants, and brown dwarfs either side, but this is the closest to the line. There will probably be a few 'missing links', because beside the mass, the flash point could depend on what the clouds are made of.
Scientists always love it when they find something that needs a new category.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Scientists have located the coldest brown dwarf star ever observed, an important 'missing link' among these half-planet, half-star celestial bodies, a new study shows.

There are many types of brown dwarf, an example of which is seen surrounded by a swirling disc of planet-building dust. But this latest discovery is in a class of its own

So-called 'L dwarfs' have temperatures of 1200-2000°C, and are enveloped in clouds of dust and aerosols in their high atmosphere.

'T dwarfs' are cooler, and their atmosphere's contain methane

The brown dwarf, poetically named CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is sizzling hot by Earth standards, with a surface temperature of some 350°C.

French and Canadian astronomers made the discovery using two powerful telescopes in Hawaii and one in Chile, according to the study, to be published this month in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

it is far colder than any brown dwarf seen to date,

It constitutes a kind of missing link between small stars and giant planets

Thye Largest Star in the Universe ~ Visualized

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:19:16 GMT

clipped by: Tylast
clipper's remarks: Just click the picture & watch! Just have a couple min of patience to watch the pics.

Clip Source: www.techdo.com

But be patient because it’s worth the wait.

Here on planet Earth, we're completely oblivious to the grand scale of things in the universe. Much the way we perceive dust particles as being insignifcant, universally speaking we are not much more than this. The scale of things is mind blowing!

So how small are we really? Click to open an awesome image that explains visually how massive some celestial objects really are. The Largest Known Star might take a bit to load since it’s an animated gif.

The last star is called VY Canis Majoris, a hypergiant star located 5,000 light years from earth and is considered to be the largest star discovered in the universe.

Tags: space, astronomy

The Ancient Mechanics and How They Thought

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:12:51 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: He also majored in astronomy as an undergraduate, and about nine years ago, feeling science-deprived, he joined a multinational research endeavor called the Archimedes Project, based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

The Archimedes team studies the history of mechanics, how people thought about simple machines like the lever, the wheel and axle, the balance, the pulley, the wedge and the screw and how they turned their thoughts into theories and principles.

The textual record begins with “Mechanical Problems,” moves to Rome and then through the medieval Islamic world to the Renaissance. It ends, finally, with Newton, who described many of the basic laws of mechanics in the 18th century.

By following the historical record, the Archimedes researchers have discovered that the evolution of physics — or, at least, mechanics — is based on an interplay between practice and theory.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

LAW OF THE LEVER On triremes, the end oarsmen were the most effective.

“Think of the oar as a lever,” Prof. Mark Schiefsky of the Harvard classics department said. “Think of the oarlock as a fulcrum, and think of the sea as the weight.”

The longer the lever arm on the rower’s side of the fulcrum, the easier to move the weight. In the middle of the ship, as the rowers knew, the distance from hands to oarlock was longest.

This explanation is given in Problem 4 of the classical Greek treatise “Mechanical Problems,” from the third century B.C., the first known text on the science of mechanics and the first to explain how a lever works. It preceded, by at least a generation, Archimedes’ “On the Equilibrium of Plane Figures,” which presented the first formal proof of the law of the lever.

EARTHMOVER Archimedes said he could move the Earth if given a place to stand.

Dr. Schiefsky teaches Greek and Latin as his day job and reads Thucydides and Sophocles in ancient Greek for fun.

Tags: physics, ancient mechanics, science, classics, research, archimedes project