Stories tagged astronomy
Hohenzollern Castle and the Big Dipper above the clouds
Courtesy Allthesky.comCheck out The Sky in Motion, a nifty 4+ minute time lapse video created by Till Credner of the Max Planck Institute of Solar System Research. Then check out his Allthesky.com homepage. It contains links to loads of digital images of space and atmospheric phenomenon such as eclipses, lightning, comets, auroras, etc. The site originates in Germany and I think you'll agree it contains many remarkable images.
Tags : Guitarist for Queen
Studies tiny asteroids
O, Galileo!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sci-ku ™ -- haiku in the service of science!
Black hole in action: Artist's rendition of a distant super-massive black hole warping space while busy eating up stellar material.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-CaltechScientists now have a better idea why stars can still form out of giant molecular clouds being ripped apart by the gravitational pull of a nearby massive black hole.
The observed existence of huge stars in eccentric orbits around the super-massive black hole believed to be located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy has puzzled scientists. How can stars form in such extreme environments? Gravitational forces would be tremendous near the black hole, tearing apart everything in the immediate region.
The computer simulations, done by researchers from St Andrews University in the UK, show how a molecular cloud – a normal stellar nursery – is torn apart by the black hole’s immense gravitation pull. Although the powerful gravity-well eats a huge portion of the gas cloud, the remaining gases are still able to accrete more material and coalesce into stars.
This is possible because as a molecular cloud enters the black hole’s gravitational field it begins to form into a spiraling elliptical disk. The disk’s matter nearest the black hole is sucked into the gravitational vortex, while energy is transferred to the remaining outer material. This transferred energy allows the remnants to retain the eccentric orbital path as they form into huge stars many times the mass of the Sun.
"These simulations show that young stars can form in the neighborhood of super-massive black holes as long as there is a reasonable supply of massive clouds of gas from further out in the galaxy," said co-author Ian Bonnell. The study’s results appear in the current issue of Science.
The stars live fairly short lives - perhaps only about 10 million years. But their existence could help explain some of the mysteries surrounding black holes in galaxies.
LINKS
Story on BBC website
Science magazine abstract
More on super-massive black holes
You may have read about this here in the Buzz a while back, but the first public viewing for Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo aircraft will Monday. That aircraft will carry a separate craft – SpaceShipTwo – to a high altitude from where it will blast free and carry space tourists on a few laps around the Earth 62 miles up. Here are the full details.
What moon am I?: Ancient cultures had special names for each full month's full moon. Tonight's full moon is a "Buck Moon." Can you figure out what moon this one is?
Courtesy Luc ViatourTonight there will be a full moon. It happens every 29.5 days, no big deal right?
But did you know each full moon through the cycle of a calendar year has a special name? Tonight’s full moon, the one for July, is called a “Buck Moon,” named after a male deer.
The special monthly names for the full moons go back to ancient cultures, who tied the full moons to hunting, weather, planting and harvesting cycles of the year. Full details can be found here.
FYI: Here is a rundown of the various names for each month’s full moon:
January – Wolf Moon
February – Snow Moon
March – Worm Moon
April – Pink Moon
May – Flower Moon
June – Strawberry Moon
July – Buck Moon
August – Sturgeon Moon
September – Harvest Moon
October – Hunter's Moon
November – Beaver Moon
December – Cold Moon
Are we next?: No. Definitely not.
Courtesy NASAY’all know what “fratricide” is? It’s when a brother kills a brother. Or when a sister kills her brother. Or when a sister and a brother kill their brother. Any combination, really, involving a brother getting iced.
Well, it has happened on Jupiter. A little brother has been torn apart by his giant siblings. And by giant, I mean many times the size of earth.
The Great Red Spot is a huge hurricane-like storm on the surface of Jupiter. The storm has been spinning for several hundred years, and has a diameter about three times that of Earth. Also, it’s red.
The spot happens to have a couple of little brothers, too, named Red Spot Jr. (or Oval Ba, if you can’t get your head around having a little brother that’s your “Jr.”) and the Little Red Spot. Or, I should say, it had a couple of little brothers. Now it has a little brother, and some spare brother chunks. You see, Great Red Spot, and Red Spot Jr. tore Little Red Spot to shreds last week.
Officials are still baffled as to the motive, but what we know is this: LRS was strolling innocently through its neighborhood of Jupiter when it was ambushed from either side by GRS and RSJ. No weapons are thought to have been involved, ironically making the crime that much more brutal—the larger storms ripped their little brother apart with their own stormy hands, and when GRS and RSJ ran off, all that was left of LRS were sad little shreds.
The proximity of the incident has complicated investigation, to say the least, but I have my own theories. Red Spot Junior, as it happens, only recently earned its title—it was not until only two years ago that it actually turned red. I think that RSJ may have been long overdue to prove itself as a true red spot. Both intimidated and protected by its larger brother, RSJ was content to allow GRS to be the planet’s muscle. Over the months, however, I guess that RSJ’s desire to prove itself intensified, or that GRS tired of doing its little brother’s dirty work. Either way, the two larger spots turned their sites towards their small brother, always the “simplest” of the three. I think it’s very likely that GRS provided cover and just watched while RSJ did the butcher’s work, but the blood doesn’t stand out on its recently acquired coloring.
The red color of the spots, although no doubt symbolic of their bloodthirsty hearts, is not entirely understood. It’s thought that the color may come from material sucked from deep in the planet as the storms get stronger. Phosphorus-containing molecules, for instance would turn red when exposed to sunlight on the planet’s surface.
Astronomers the world over are reeling from the violent act.
Researchers have used a solar eclipse to determine that Odysseus returned home from the Trojan Wars on April 16, 1178 B.C. Not bad for a character widely thought to be fictional.
Spiral galaxy M81: The black hole in the center of this galaxy is 70 million times as massive as the Sun, but it behaves exactly the same as much, much smaller black holes.
Courtesy X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas; Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA
This may fall under the heading of small comfort, but a new study has shown that all black holes, big or small, suck in matter in the same way. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers studied the different types of light (X-ray, radio and visible) emanating from the region around a massive black hole in the center of galaxy M81. They found that this light was the same as light coming from smaller black holes, even though this one is some 10 million times bigger, and is sucking in matter from a different source. This confirms a part of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which predicted that black holes would be fairly simple objects, not subject to a lot of variation. Which doesn’t really help much if you find yourself getting sucked in, but at least you know it’s nothing personal.
You can learn more about Chandra and X-ray astronomy in our Be an Astronomer! web exhibit. And you can ask questions of Megan Donahue, a scientist who work with the Chandra observatory.
Good lookin', bad soundin': Radiowaves that get caught up in the Northern Lights are creating some annoying noises that zap out into space.
Courtesy NASANo wonder aliens want to attack the Earth with such regularity in the movies. From out in space, we sound pretty annoying, like that renter in the apartment above you who insists on playing Yoko Ono records at 2:30 in the morning.
You laugh, but new recordings from space show that Earth, our home, makes an array of nasty sounds that ring out across the universe.
Scientists have actually known about this phenomenon since the 1970s. But today we have some audio evidence of this annoying noise. So what’s happening?
There’s a bunch of radiation created high above our planet. Solar winds blow it into Earth’s magnetic field and then things start to get loud. Basically, this radiation gets sucked into the same conditions that cause the Northern Lights. While they look great, they sound horrible – sorta like Brittney Spears.
Earth’s ionosphere keeps the radio waves created in this action from coming down toward us, which is a good thing. That’s because they’re about 10,000 times stronger than any radio signals we have on our planet.
Satellites from the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, however, have now detected strong beams of these annoying radio waves out in space.
Click here to hear a sample of what this space noise sounds like. Personally, I think I’ve experienced this sound, much quieter, after eating a bad burrito.
Two NASA scientists propose building giant telescopes on the Moon, using Moon dust as raw material. If successful, the telescopes would be larger than anything on Earth. And with no atmosphere to distort images, the pictures would be sharper, too.
Recent comments
Which presidential candidate do you think will better advocate for the interests of science and technology?
Immaculate conception observed. In a shark.
Beware of boxelder bugs
Immaculate conception observed. In a shark.
Subscribe
I want to learn about
Science Buzz and all related activities
Science Museum of Minnesota, 2004-2008,
except where otherwise noted.
Copyright Information
Add a new comment