Astronomers get first glimpse of the most distant known galaxy

Just 700 million years after the big bang, our most distant known galaxy was a cauldron of star production, churning out new suns hundreds of times faster than our own Milky Way galaxy, scientists say. This spring, roughly 13 billion years later, astronomers have first glimpsed evidence of this ferocious activity and confirmed the distance and age of the galaxy now designated as z8_GND_5296, according to Los Angeles Times.

In a paper published recently in the journal Nature, researchers said discovery of the galaxy suggested our early universe was capable of far more star production than previously believed.

Radiant energy, including visible light, travels no faster than 186,000 miles per second. Since it took that energy almost 13 billion years to travel from z8_GND_5296 to the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, researchers can only study the galaxy as it was in its infancy.

It would appear very different if we were to glimpse its form in real time, scientists say. In order to determine the galaxy's age and distance from Earth, scientists study its so-called redshift, or the lengthening wavelengths of energy emitted by its stars over great distances. The higher the redshift, the greater the distance.

It's only recently, however, that technology has advanced to the point that high redshifts can be studied. In the case of z8_GND_5296, scientists used Keck's MOSFIRE, the Multi-Object Spectrometer for Infra-Red Exploration, for this purpose. It's likely then that further galaxies will be observed.

To read more, click here.

Weird galaxy discovered at a distance of 9.4 billion light-years

A team led by Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany has announced that it has made a “weird and interesting discovery,” more precisely described as the most distant gravitational lens ever seen. The lensing object is a galaxy some 9.4 billion light-years away—an enormous distance in a universe that burst into existence just 13.8 billion years ago.

The object being lensed—its image is split into four distinct spots of light—is obviously even more remote, although it’s so small and faint that it’s hard to assign its distance a hard number. What makes this discovery so weird, though, isn’t its distance but the nature of the thing being magnified. It’s a tiny dwarf galaxy whose weight in stars adds up to only about 100 million Suns’ worth—a piker compared with the Milky Way’s 100 billion or more. The overall color of the galaxy tells astronomers that it’s also very young—no more than 40 million years old—and forming stars at a furious rate.

Dwarf galaxies aren’t especially rare; astronomers keep finding them flitting around the Milky Way, and think many more are waiting to be found. But these tiny galaxies can’t sustain bursts of star formation for very long since they don’t have a lot of raw material to work with. That ought to have made this one very hard to spot, since it was at such a distance and it would have been bright enough to see only for a relatively small sliver of its lifespan.

That, plus the inherent difficulty involved in  the lensing effect occurring at all—the foreground and background objects have to line up with exquisite precision—makes the fact that this lensed galaxy ever turned up in telescopes even more improbable, the result of just the right conditions and angles converging at just the right time.

To read more about the discovery, click here.

A tilted solar system: Planets orbit at an angle of 45 degrees!

Astronomers looking at a data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have discovered a “tilted” solar system – a solar system where two of the planets orbit their star at a 45 degree angle. The two planets are orbiting the star currently known as Kepler-56, which is about 2,800 light years from Earth. Kepler-56 is a red giant that has about twice the diameter of our sun but is only about 30 percent more massive.

Most solar systems discovered so far – including our own – feature planets that orbit their star in roughly the same plane as the star’s equator. Earth, for example, orbits the sun at an angle that’s only about 7.2 degrees above that plane. That’s because most solar systems form from a giant spinning disc of dust and gas that, through the influence of gravity, eventually becomes a star, its planets, its asteroids, etc.

The two planets appear to be held in their tilted orbit because of the gravitational pull of a much larger planet in the same solar system, which is located on the outer edge of the system. That planet  is “tugging” on the other two with its gravity. The gravitational pull of the massive outer planet and the sun keep the two planets at their tilted orbits.

The two planets also have a “resonance” with each other that helps keep their orbits stable – one of the planets circles the star almost exactly twice as fast, which helps keep the two planets in the same orbital plane.

To read more about the discovery, click here.

Free-floating new red planet has no star

There's a new red planet, according to researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dubbed PSOJ318.5-22, the exotic young planet is about 80 light years from Earth. Unlike all other known planets, this one does not orbit a star and is considered free-floating.

Dr. Michael Liu's research team was on the look out for failed stars, known as brown dwarfs, when they came across PSO J318.5-22. The Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) telescope, located in Haleakala, Hawaii, first detected the planet's heat signature, and they confirmed the findings by using other telescopes on the Hawaii Islands. Despite being named "brown dwarfs," these are typically faint and red.

PSO J318.5-22 is redder and fainter the reddest brown dwarfs. The research team tracked the young planetary-mass object for two years. Studying this planet will give clues to other gas-giants, including Jupiter.

To read more about the research and its findings, click here.

The densest galaxy is only 54 million light years away?

Astronomers have recently discovered the densest galaxy ever seen, at 54 million light years away, and it is said to be in our galactic neighborhood. Using the combined imaging capabilities of ground-based observatories with the high-flying Hubble Space Telescope and its cousin, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the ultra-compact dwarf galaxy known as M60-UCD1 turns out to be 15,000 times denser than what is found in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

What’s even more remarkable about M60-USD1 is that the galaxy’s most crowded part–its core, where half its 200 million solar masses resides–spans a radius of only 80 light years. That means the stars in this little galaxy are about 25 times closer to each other than those we find around the Sun’s galactic neighborhood.

Observations have revealed that the galaxy’s tiny core harbors a strong x-ray source, which belongs to a giant black hole that weighs 10 million times the mass of our sun. That makes it about twice the size of the black hole in our own galaxy.

To read more about the observations, click here.  Watch a video about the galaxy here.

When five cosmic events adorned the sky

During the last week, sky-watchers could spot the moon dancing with celestial luminaries like planets and stars. Within a half hour after sunset on Tuesday, September 24, Mercury made a remarkably close encounter with Virgo constellation’s brightest star Spica. The cosmic pair appeared to squeak past each other—well within 1 degree—the closest conjunction between a planet and such a bright star in 2013.

This cosmic duo posed a real challenge for observers because of its proximity to the horizon. Using Venus and Saturn as a convenient guidepost helped track down Mercury/Spica which were about 22 degrees apart—a little more than the width of two side-by-side fists at arm’s length.

Into the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 25, the eastern and southern skies had a stunning waning moon passing the left of the red giant Aldebaran—the bright “eye” of Taurus. The near quarter moon was said to join Aldebaran - the brightest star in the constellation Taurus - the bull on Sept.24/25.

Earth’s natural satellite appeared less than three degrees from the 68 light-year distant star—equal to the width of your three middle fingers at arm’s length. The moon during daytime on Wednesday passed through the southern sky, and one could catch sight of Aldebaran with binoculars.

Last-quarter moon occurred on Thursday, September 26 at 11:56 pm EDT (Friday, 3:56 am UT). The moon rose in the east around midnight, and is said to have passed between winter constellations Gemini, to the left, and Orion, on its right.

At dawn on Saturday, September 28 the waning crescent Moon was only five degrees south of the beacon-like Jupiter. The two appeared particularly pretty with binoculars, and one could also spot the gas giant’s four biggest moons.

On Sunday, September 29, early bird sky watchers gazing towards the eastern sky would have noticed that the moon had sunk between bright Mars, near the eastern horizon, and Jupiter, more than halfway near the zenith, forming a diagonal alignment of the neighboring worlds.

For more amazing pictures, click here.

Powerful solar storm slams into earth

A powerful solar explosion slammed into Earth's magnetic field recently, ramping up the Northern Lights across parts of Canada and the United States.

The sun storm erupted Monday, sending a huge cloud of charged particles streaking into space at incredible speeds. That cloud — known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME — hit Earth's magnetic field at around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, researchers said. NASA released a video of the sun eruption on Monday, before closing down for the current government shutdown.

Such storms can also cause the Northern Lights to be seen as far south as New York and Idaho. Flare-ups were indeed seen in North America as a result of the recent CME impact. The sun is in the peak year of its current 11-year activity cycle, which is known as Solar Cycle 24. The number of sunspots increases during a solar maximum, leading to more solar flares and CMEs, which erupt from these temporary dark patches on our star.

The sun has been quiet during its current cycle, and the peak has been lackluster so far as well. In fact, scientists say Solar Cycle 24's maximum is the weakest in 100 years.

You can read more about the impact here and watch the video here.