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zespaceblog · 11 hours
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Omega Centauri
When it comes to globular clusters, Omega Centauri is a real stand out. It is the largest of the 150+ known globular clusters roaming around our Galaxies halo, at 10 million stars packed into a insane 150 light years squared it's hard to quite imagine what a trip to the centre would be like, with stars packed in so close it would be hard to untangle which were binary partners and which were just close partners, one will assume they are switching partners all the time.
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It's also the brightest globular cluster, at Mag 3.9, which means if you're living in the Southern Hemisphere, you can see this with your naked eyes in fairly dark areas ! Only one other globular cluster can be seen with the naked eye, 47 Tucanae.
It's also 15,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation of (no prizes for this one) Centaurus.
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But one of the more interesting and unique things about this cluster is the make up of the stars. In most globular clusters, the stars are ancient (low metallicity) and long lived, around 10-12 billion years old.
Omega Centauri however has a number of distinct populations within, and as a result, it has many red giants, making close up pictures of it particularly amazing.
In 2022 when Gaia scanned the cluster, it produced the following image showing new faint stars that had previously not been detected.
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It appears as if it's got a hole in the centre, however this is simply because the central region was so densely packed with stars, no telescope could resolve it, but Gaia was able to push closer into the centre.
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To the right was an image of the cluster was taken by Gaia trying to focus in on single stars, it quickly gets overwhelmed by the sheer quantity. To the left, is a special mode added to Gaia for non-science reasons was able to actually collect 10 times more star information.
It is thought that Omega Centauri may be the remnant of a previously captured galaxy core that was stripped apart by our own galaxy, but the core was too gravitationally dense and so has remained as this amazing object.
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zespaceblog · 1 day
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Sag A* and it's Magnetic Properties
Sat at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, lies a supermassive black hole over 4.5 times the mass of our sun. On 12 May 2022 Event Horizon having already taken the very first image of a supermassive black hole in M87, turned it's attempts to peer through 25,000 light years of dust and gas to grab the first image of our very own galactic monster, and since has continued it's work to produce the above image showing the magnetic lines coming from it.
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The same work had been undertaken with M87 previously, and what Scientists have found is, essentially both show very similar structures.
Why is this important ? It's the first indication that the physics at work in these black holes are almost the same, despite the difference in size between them, with M87 being 5 billion times the mass of our sun.
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But how can they know about this ?
It's all down to polarized light, the magnetic fields change the way the light reaches us, and so, we can map this and create these detailed images of how the fields flow within the light.
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The light itself is not directly from the black hole, that's at the centre, but it's an accretion disk of material that flows around it, and is distorted by gravity to look as above.
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zespaceblog · 2 days
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I Zwicky 18
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One of the most peculiar of galaxies, I Zwicky 18 has been for some time thought to be a close resemblance to early galaxies.
The galaxy has very poor metallicity, meaning most of the stars are being born from hydrogen and helium, with little other element involved.
This is peculiar because the galaxy also shows huge star formation, and stars fuse hydrogen and helium into metals, and so it was assumed this galaxy itself must be incredibly young, just a few million years old.
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That was until Hubble started looking at it a decade or more ago, and found stars of all types, G, K and M types with ages most likely in their billions, if not right back to the start of the universe itself.
So, how did this galaxy avoid star formation for so long, it's a bit of a mystery. We know JWST has since discovered galaxies in the early universe were not anything like what we imagined, and while that may reduce some interest in I Zwicky 18, the mysteries of it's creation and history will certainly keep astronomers focused on this.
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The galaxy also has companions, which also seem to follow the same bizarre construction.
The best guess is, that the galaxy sits in an area of rather pure hydrogen, and gravitational interactions over its histories (including recently) have pushed that gas inwards and into densities that have sparked star formation, of particularly large O and B type stars, which themselves don't last so long.
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zespaceblog · 3 days
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The Butterfly Galaxy
Of course, this isn't a single galaxy, not quite yet ! It's two spiral galaxies about to merge with each other, but it's the angle's of both from our location that makes this particularly amazing, as it almost appears as if the two are untouched by the interaction.
Yet, the Supermassive black holes at the heart of both are around 20,000 light years apart, that's less distance that you are sitting from Sag A* .
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What we do know is that the halo of both galaxies has started to merge, and that this is kick-starting a large amount of star formation.
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However, not every spiral galaxy that looks to intersect, is actually merging, above is an example of one spiral just being in front of another, with the distance between them being enough that no actual gravitational interaction is possible.
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zespaceblog · 4 days
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Orion Nebula in Blue and Red
You may think you've got good eyesight, and for a human you may be even correct, but the universe hides it's secrets in emissions no human can see, and so most astronomical images are manipulated to show hidden secrets.
Here is a very familiar structure, The Orion Nebula, visible to the naked eye if the location is dark enough, although nothing like the image above.
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Above is what you could see if you had a very dark environment and very good eyes,.
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Here a little larger, but this is just a small part of the upper image, there's far more there you simply cannot see.
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To show what you're missing out on, I used Stellarium web to show the area of the upper image, you can just about see Barnards loop to the left, that's the red area in the upper image, the 3 stars of Orion's belt are easy to spot, and the horsehead nebula just below the star Alnitak (left of the belt in the above image).
The visible bit is merely the M42 circled area, but the entire structure is far larger.
So in order to show some the structure in ways our human eyes can see, the image was changed to show hydrogen and Sulphur in reds, and Oxygen in blues.
And here's a few close up's from Hubble and JWST on M42
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zespaceblog · 5 days
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Our galaxy and many of the galaxies we observe where star birth is still happening, contain a large number of blue supergiant stars.
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While we know a fair amount about how stars are formed, and can even see them forming in many nebulas in our galaxy, what leads to a star being a giant blue main sequence star rather than a smaller longer lived A, F, G, K, M type star (our Sun is G type) is not wholly understood, however new work done at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias think the clue could be in the partners these stars have.
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Most star systems are binary star systems, other stars that orbit alongside in various configurations. However, most O and B type stars, the blue giants, are mostly devoid of companions.
The team involve believe this is because during birth, binary partners ended up merging and forming these massive blue stars.
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Blue giants are the rock stars of the universe, they live short and energetic lives, and often end in a supernova or even collapsing into stellar black holes. You'll not see these in elliptical galaxies where almost all star birth has ended, but even in the oldest parts of our galaxy, the central bulge, blue giants are being created, and look amazing against the more creamy colour of smaller M, K and G type stars that can live for 10+ billion years, and make their way to the centre still within their main sequence life.
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zespaceblog · 6 days
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Lynds Dark Nebula 1251
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Dark Nebula's are the same as any other nebula, clouds of dust and gas, although what makes them dark is that they obscure the starlight behind them, while other nebula's reflect it or even glow themselves due to bombardment from UV light.
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It is often said, that a silence in a piece of music can take on just as much significance as the instruments, and in the same way, the dark gaps made by dark nebula in a sea of stars, can remind us that we are looking at billions of stars all within our Milky Way galaxy, and that beyond that are uncountable numbers of galaxies.
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The cloud itself is about 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cepheus.
Our galaxy is a huge mass of dust and gas, and the stars including our Sun, were born inside them, everything in our solar system came from that birth cloud, with some additions over the long life span, and that means, you and everything that makes you up came from a cloud like this, around 4.6 billion years ago.
Maybe in the same amount of time, as our Sun is ending it's main sequence life, and our Earth a distant memory, a star born from this, with a planet not too dissimilar to our own, may peer out into the galaxy to realise they too were born of a similar cloud of dust and gas.
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zespaceblog · 7 days
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The Leo Triplets
Although all 3 galaxies are 35 million light years from Earth, how far are they from each other ? The tell tale signs of gravitational interaction, certainly indicates they are close.
In fact, M65 (Top right) and M66 (Bottom right) are a mere 160,000 light years apart, similar to the Milky Way and the LMC.
NGC 3628 (the side on spiral galaxy to the left) is about 300,000 light years from both M65/66.
The three galaxies will eventually merge into a much larger galaxy.
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zespaceblog · 8 days
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The Eye's of Markarian
Two galaxies separated by 100,000 light years, similar to our own dwarf galaxies LMC,SMC but not so long ago may have been as close as 16,000 light years, and as a result the tidal interactions between the two galaxies has stripped the smaller of dust, gas and stars, while leaving a stretched out and wound arm around the larger, and huge areas of dust and gas and star formation.
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The two galaxies make up part of the Markarian chain, a string of mostly unconnected galaxies in the Virgo supercluster, and many far beyond, and commonly thought of as the Eyes of of the chain.
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It is thought that 7 of the galaxies are not so far apart, while the others just happen be in the way.
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zespaceblog · 9 days
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Is Betelgeuse Spinning Too Fast ?
Recent observations of Betelgeuse have appeared to show it spinning around a lot faster than seemed possible, but a recent study modelling Betelgeuse may have solved why it appears to be doing this.
The star is one of the largest stars known, and in our night sky, is also one of the dominant stars making up the constellation of Orion.
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It's also easy to spot the redness in the star, particularly when contrasted against the blue/white of the belt and the other bright star Rigel in this constellation.
There's been a huge amount of observation since the great dimming event in 2019-20, so finding it's spin to be surprisingly fast, may have raised the steaks that it was gearing up for supernova.
However, the animated gif above created by a team simulating how the star would appear if you were close enough to do so, shows it as a huge boiling and bubbling mass.
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What the team did, was take the simulation, and model it as if it was being viewed by ALMA from Earth, and found that the fast spin, may merely be a mirage brought about by the way the star bubbles, and in fact, it does not spin anywhere near as fast as previously thought.
That possibility of a supernova in our lives is pretty unlikely, but over the next 100,000 years, it's almost certain.
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zespaceblog · 10 days
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A New Star, for a while ..
The constellation of Corona Borealis probably isn't one you're that familiar with, owning mostly to it's size and lack of particularly bright stars, nestled (if not almost hidden) between the constellations of Bootes with it's bright magnitude 0.11 star Arcturus, and Hercules which is almost as dim, but at least takes up a reasonable amount of the heavenly real-estate.
However an event expected soon may change that, and give you something more interesting to look towards, because it's likely to be a naked eye visible event, a new star of the brightness of Polaris (around Mag 2).
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The star is a binary partner between a red giant and a white dwarf which keeps stealing material, over time this builds up, and is super heated by the far hotter white dwarf. When it reaches a critical temperature, it ignites fusion in the accreted matter and that's what causes a several day long explosion, catapulting this star from Mag 10 to Mag 2.
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As a result, these events tend to be fairly predictable, the T CrB nova occurs every 80 years, and that's where we are.
How to find it
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Locate Vega and Arcturus, that will be slightly brighter, and find towards the middle a star around similar brightness as those in Ursa Major, a constellation you almost certainly will be familiar with.
In the northern skies, this should be visible not so long after sunset, however in the southern skies, you may need to wait for a few hours before sunrise, as these constellations are low on the horizon, and the sun follows not so far behind them, however it should be visible from Cape Town, Sydney and Buenos Aires low and due North.
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zespaceblog · 11 days
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Stars in the Dark
Above is NGC 7714, part of the ARP 284 peculiar galaxies catalogue, although in this case, two interacting galaxies thought to have been pulling at each other for over 150 million years, and will take many more to complete the merger.
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Such galaxy mergers spray stars all over the place, you can see how the arms of the spiral have sprayed open and stars can be seen as fuzzy patches stretching out for 100,000's of light years either side.
It's not just galaxy mergers that throw stars out of galaxies, supernova with a close binary partner can cannonball it out and into the depths of intergalactic space.
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So while galaxies are in many ways islands in a universal sea, in between are stars and stella corpses free floating.
A recent survey even suggested that despite the 2.5 million light year distance between our galaxy and Andromeda, it has already begun the process of sharing and passing materials between each other.
So, it's quite possible that out there, between galaxies lies an old G type star, ejected as part of a merger a few billion years ago, it held onto it's planets and on one life exists, looking out on a dark starless sky, with exception to the planets that light up it's night.
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zespaceblog · 12 days
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NGC 6934 - Globular Cluster
While JWST searches for some of the most ancient objects in our universe, we have 150 of some of the oldest objects right here in our own Galaxy, called Globular Clusters.
What we do know about these amazing structures is that contain 100's thousands if not millions of ancient stars, some thought to go right back to within a billion years of the universe's creation, while others like NGC 6934 show a little more complexity in the metals, suggesting a slightly younger, but still rather old, 10 billion years.
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The cluster has a highly eccentric orbit at 0.81 around our galaxy, similar to what you'd see with comets, and is thought to also sport a bit of a tail, although in this case it will be a tail of stars, the stars being slowly kicked out of the cluster by coming too close to others and being gravitationally kicked out.
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As a result of the orbit, these objects tend to hang out in the halo, far from the main spiral structure, the entire image is around 50 light years only, so try to imagine hundreds of thousands of stars all fit within this 50 light year space, getting gradually more dense towards the centre.
Some theories suggest that the black holes from stars long since gone supernova, will have sunk to the centre, creating what is known as gravitational collapse, the beginnings of a intermediate black hole, although all the observations to date have found many black holes and not the collapse you'd certainly expect to see given the age of these objects.
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Finally to imagine a night sky if our star was within such a globular cluster, image posted on Reddit by u/anadampapadam.
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zespaceblog · 13 days
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NGC 1055
52 Million light years from Earth in the constellation of Cetus, lies a spiral galaxy just a bit larger than our own galaxy, but edge with enough angle to just about see the central bulge.
What stands out most is the area at the edges and above/below the galaxy, what looks like a mist around it, is in fact large populations of stars probably thrown into chaotic orbit, and could potentially represent a recent merger with a dwarf galaxy, where many of the stars have yet to settle into an orbit on the same plane as the stars in the main body.
The dust and gas is also very strongly shown, with those tell tale pink/blue regions of nebula and star birth.
The large spiky stars of course are not part of NGC 1055, but a little closer to home, being stars in our own galaxy that just happen to lie between us and the galaxy.
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This galaxy sits in a small grouping, one of which is M77 The Squid Galaxy, seen in the upper part of the image below.
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M77 is a active barred spiral galaxy, meaning it's supermassive black hole is producing a large jet from the poles of the black hole, visible in Radio waves.
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zespaceblog · 14 days
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JWST Views NGC604
It may look like another beautiful JWST image from a Nebula not so far away, but NGC604 isn't in the Milky Way, neither is it in the LMC or SMC, it's actually in a one of our closest neighbours, the Spiral galaxy known as the Triangulum galaxy.
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When viewed with the MIRI instrument, new details emerge, showing more of the massive stars being born at it's heart, some thought to be over 100 solar masses.
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The huge empty regions are probably created by shockwaves from multiple supernova events, as these high mass young stars don't live very long, but the shockwaves also bring material together, create more dense and star forming regions.
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Compare these images with the original Hubble images, you can see the level of detail JWST is bringing, not just to the Milky Way or galaxies at the start of our universe, but nebula and star birth galaxies far outside of the influence of our own Milky Way.
The Triangulum Galaxy is 2.7 Million light years from Earth.
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zespaceblog · 15 days
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Webb Detects COMs
Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are what make life possible, the building blocks of life, so a team of astronomers wondered who frequent are these molecules in protostars such as IRAS 23385 (above) and IRAS 2A.
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The findings of Alcohol (Ethanol) and Acetic Acid (found in Vinegar) are identified as being in frozen deposits orbiting these stars.
Other molecules found including formic acid (which causes the burning sensation of an ant sting), methane, formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide (an important chemical that drove early life metabolism).
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The protostars are found in NGC 1333, 967 light years away in the constellation of Perseus.
While the building blocks of life appear to be much more common than initially thought, what role these molecules play with planets as they form, and if that results in life are still far from understood.
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zespaceblog · 16 days
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ARP 273
Gravity is what creates stars, and eventually kills them, but this is true also of entire galaxies of stars.
The ARP catalogue of peculiar galaxies is one of my favourite, showing interacting galaxies near and far. This one, ARP 273 is over 300 million light years from us, in the constellation of Andromeda.
The shockwave of the interaction in the upper part of the larger galaxy has caused a huge amount of new stars to form, as dust and gas is shook up and pushed together, entire arms of both galaxies are pulled between the two galaxies, which ultimately will consume the smaller one creating a new larger spiral galaxy.
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Hubble also picks up some background galaxies far behind it, as well as a few stars very much in our own galaxy.
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And then the older, more yellow/red of the central bulge, with the arms pushing dust and gas towards the central region, and no doubt feeding the supermassive black hole towards the centre. Most of these stars are much older, as many of the blue stars live short lives and only reach the central region as neutron stars, or black holes themselves.
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