Monster star merger on the move

Twin monster stars are merging, in a confirmation of a long-held theory on how supermassive stars are born. A Spanish astronomy team reports the eclipsing binary star system, known as MY Camelopardalis (MY Cam), in the journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics. From Earth, the system's two gigantic stars appear to eclipse one another almost every day, as they circle on a very tight orbit.

By looking at the high-resolution spectra of the two stars with the powerful 2.2-meter telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in southern Spain, the researchers, led by Javier Lorenzo of Spain's Universidad de Alicante, were able to determine the physical properties of each of the stars, including their surface temperatures and sizes.

The two hot, blue stars, weighing in at 38 and 32 times the mass of our sun, complete orbits of each other in less than 1.2 days. That is so close that the team concludes they are inevitably destined to merge into a single behemoth star, one that will have an astounding 60 times the mass of the sun.

The authors of the recently published study show that MY Cam is already one of the heftiest binary star systems ever seen. In fact, the two stars are likely close enough that their outer atmospheres are already touching and interacting. They are also rotating around each other at whopping speeds of 621,000 miles (one million kilometers) per hour.

Read about astronomical eclipses here.

Geminid meteor shower to streak across N.J. skies

The only things that you need to watch the Geminid meteor shower, the annual display in the December sky, are warm clothes. Carlton Pryor, a professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said, "They’re actually one of the better meteor showers of the year – except it’s not always pleasant to be outside.” 

The Geminid meteor shower is produced by a rocky asteroid and partially breaks off with each near-miss of the sun in its orbit, sending debris toward the Earth, Pryor said. The little bits of sand and space dust hit the Earth’s atmosphere, causing streaks in the sky viewable by the naked eye, he added.

The best way to view the meteor shower is to find the darkest sky possible, preferably in a rural area, find a comfortable spot with the best vantage point of the northern sky, and glance straight up, Pryor said. The peak time will be midnight to 2 a.m. Saturday night into Sunday morning.

To read more, click here.

Astronomers discover a strange spiral galaxy

A strange galaxy called J1649+2635, nearly 800 million light-years from Earth, has astronomers scratching their heads … but in a good way. 

Like our Milky Way, it’s a spiral galaxy, and it’s the most recent of only four known galaxies with prominent jets of subatomic particles propelled outward from its core at nearly light speed. 

The mystery is that spiral galaxies aren’t supposed to have such large jets. It took a combined effort of astronomers and citizen scientists to discover J1649+2635 and shed light on the mystery.

According to a December 2, 2014 press release from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the first spiral galaxy with a jet was found in 2003. The second was found in 2011, and the third was found earlier this year. All three spiral galaxies with jets were discovered by combining radio and visible-light images.

But how did the observatory team figure out? Read about the discovery here.

Philae lands on comet

The European agency's Philae lander, which bounced into a dark corner after an historic comet landing earlier this week, has gone silent.

The Rosetta Mission space probe, which touched down Wednesday, had only a sliver of sunlight powering its solar batteries after it ended up surrounded by rocks and in shadow.

The Guardian said it all with this headline: Rosetta mission: Philae goes to sleep on comet as batteries run out.

According to the paper, the lander was getting less than two hours of sunlight instead of the six to seven hours it needed.

All is not completely lost. The comet, which is out beyond the orbit of Mars, will make its closest approach to the sun in August 2015, which may allow the lander to reboot.

The deflation about the comet landing's turn for the worse was matched only by the elation about its arrival.

Nothing seemed to captivate the world more this week by the landing of the Rosetta space probe on a comet 371 million miles from earth.

Perhaps that is because the universe is us.

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars," late astronomer Carl Sagan once said. "We are made of starstuff”

And starstuff is definitely out of this world. For proof, just check out the videos below.

The lander touched down on the surface of Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko, a.k.a. Comet 67P, Wednesday, to the applause and cheers of scientists at the agency’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany.

Philae bounced twice after touchdown, however, and ended up in a shadow, where it ran out of its solar-powered battery Friday.

It had been analyzing the cosmic makeup of the comet and relaying data and spectacular photographs back to earth.

According to the mission's blog, team scientists were very happy about what the scientific marvel had been able to do so far.

Click here to read more.

Discovery of microbes confirms life under Antarctic ice

Scientists have discovered life in extreme ecosystems beneath the ice sheets covering Antarctica, raising the tantalizing possibility that similar severe environments in our solar system could harbor some kind of life. Researchers have retrieved samples of healthy bacteria and other microorganism living in a freshwater lake buried beneath a half mile of ice on the frigid continent.

The environment in Lake Whillans might not be all that different from environments on a number of the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, scientists say. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, orbiting Saturn, both have been found to possess large amounts of liquid water lying beneath their icy crusts.

Drilling down into the depths of Lake Whillans, scientists were surprised to find almost 4,000 microbial species living in the dark water, many of them dining on inorganic compounds as their primary energy source. It's the extreme nature of the environment in the coldest place on Earth that has scientists thinking of the possibilities of life existing elsewhere in our solar system.

There are almost 400 similar lakes trapped deep beneath the permanent ice cover of Antarctica, with a number of them -- including Lake Whillans -- connected by subterranean streams and rivers. Those waterways regularly fill and drain Lake Whillans like a giant bathtub in a cycle lasting between five to 10 years. The lake has been completely entombed in ice for at least a million years, the researchers say.

To read more, click here.

New image uncovers spectacular starry worlds

A telescope from the European Southern Observatory recently took a beautiful photo of two star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy, NGC 3603 and NGC 3576. The photo was taken at the La Silla Observatory, which is in the Southern Hemisphere, located in Chile, and was released on August 20.

These star clusters are very far from each other (about 10,000 light years), but they seemed to be about the same level of brightness in the photo. The NGC 3603 star cluster is about 20,000 light-years away from the Earth, while the NGC 3576 cluster is about 11,000 light-years away. They can both be found in the Milky Way's Carina-Sagittarius arm.

The NGC 3603 cluster is an area where stars are actively forming. These are some of the largest most violent cosmic bodies in the galaxy. Wolf-Rayet stars form rapidly and also burn up rapidly. These stars are incredibly large - at least 20 times larger than the Earth's sun. The photo that the ESO released this Wednesday shows clouds, HII regions, which are lit by newly-formed young stars. They are made of ultra-violet light created by the stars.

The NGC 3576 nebula also is a region where stars form. Winds from the new stars there have formed gas and dust into objects that look like a pair of ram's horns, spanning a distance of 100 light-years. You can see these objects on the right side of the picture.

There are also, as pictured, a pair of Bok globules that look like dark clouds. They can be seen towards the top of the right side of the image. The new stars that may be forming are unfortunately hidden from cameras by the dark clouds.

To read more, click here.

UFO watchers spot mysterious bone-like object on Mars

Bloggers who follow the images coming from Mars rover Curiosity spotted a thigh bone recently. It is some kind of bone and the rover captured the image on Aug. 14, according to UFO Blogger.

It's the latest in a string of fossilized animals  and other unexplained phenomena that bloggers have reported. These sightings include an iguana, a cat, a dinosaur spine, two dinosaurs, a mysterious light, a toy boat, a half-human and half-goat face and a rock that popped up from one image to the next when the rover wasn't on the move. 

NASA was initially puzzled by that one but determined the rock changed position when the rover turned in place and pushed the rock. Curiosity has been on Mars since Aug. 6, 2012. It completed its first Martian year -- 687 Earth days -- on June 24.

Cold, white dwarf star may have a giant diamond core

Astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star that could be the coldest of its type ever detected. The dwarf star resides alongside the pulsar PSR J2222-0137 and could hold at its core a diamond the size of the earth.

Estimates would place the star's age at 11 billion years, roughly the same as the Milky Way galaxy.

White dwarf stars, because of their small size, appear extremely faint, and can be incredibly difficult to spot from Earth – even with high-powered telescopes. The team, drawing on data collected from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank Telescope and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observatories said they were able to detect the extremely faint star some 900 light years away by observing the gravitational effect the star had on its companion pulsar's radio signals.

Despite being slightly more massive (1.05 times) than the Sun, the dwarf is believed to be 5,000 times cooler. The 3,000 kelvin temperature would possibly make it the coldest known white dwarf. At the heart of the star, say researchers, is a mass of crystallized carbon described as "diamond-like" and roughly the size of the Earth, formed from the center of the collapsed star.

The massive rock wouldn't be the first time astronomers have spotted a space-diamond orbiting pulsar. In 2011, Australian researchers used a similar detection method to spot a crystallized carbon mass around the pulsar PSR J1719-1438.

Far-off galaxies emit X-ray signals characteristic of dark matter

NASA scientists have detected unidentified particles emitting from a galaxy 250 million light-years away. The particles were received as X-ray signals which demonstrate theorized behaviors of dark matter- a substance which comprises 85 percent of all matter in the entire universe.

The signals were confirmed by both NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton instrument.

Scientists believe that the X-rays might contain part of dark matter’s hypothesized composition: a type of decayed X-ray particle, called a sterile neutrino. A theorized type of neutrino, sterile neutrinos are possible dark matter components which emit X-rays when they decay. However, scientists have yet to confirm whether the X-rays detected from this group of galaxies demonstrates the projected behaviors of dark matter.

“Our next step is to combine data from Chandra and JAXA’s [the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's] Suzaku mission for a large number of galaxy clusters to see if we find the same X-ray signal,” said Adam Foster, an author of the study.

Dark matter does not emit or absorb light, making it difficult for astronomers to detect beyond observing its gravitational effects. The possibility of finding sterile neutrinos has excited scientists.

To read more, click here.

Astronomers stumble upon rare trio of supermassive blackholes

Where two distant galaxies collide, three supermassive black holes engage in a gravitational dance. Two of the black holes embrace in a tight orbit, spinning out jets of gas, while the third waits off to the side.

Observations of the trio demonstrate that swirling jets can help astronomers find hidden black hole pairs. The finding also suggests that these pairs may be more common than previously thought.

Every large galaxy appears to harbor a central supermassive black hole, a pileup of the corpses of huge stars. These black holes, which can weigh well over a billion suns, appear to build up over time from collisions between galaxies. As two galaxies merge, their central black holes find one another, spiral together and eventually combine into one giant black hole.

Roger Deane, an astrophysicist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and colleagues stumbled upon the black hole trio while studying galaxies that emit a lot of radio light. The researchers knew of a galaxy that holds two black holes, which were first discovered three years ago and are separated by about 24,000 light-years. What Deane’s team figured out is that one of those black holes is actually two black holes, crowded together at just 450 light-years apart, according to the team, reports Nature.

Researchers think that compact binary supermassive black holes may be strong sources of gravitational waves. As they orbit each other, the black holes radiate gravitational energy, which should send out ripples in the fabric of space. In principle, these gravitational waves may be detectable by instruments on Earth, like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, but physicists have not directly detected the waves. A direct observation of gravitational waves would confirm a prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and also provide a way to explore the many phenomena that emit almost no light. A collection of compact black hole pairs could help researchers know where to look.

To find out more about how Deane's team distinguished between the two close-together black holes, click here.

Small galaxies play 'bigger' role in star creation: Study

Dwarf galaxies actually play a larger role in star creation than previously thought. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope estimated the rate at which stars were created in the tiny galaxies.

Over the past decades, astronomers have been studying the link between the mass of a galaxy and the rate at which stars are formed.

A majority of the studies focused on large and medium galaxies paying little attention to the dwarfs. Hakim Atek of Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland says astronomers have always suspected that the small galaxies do contribute to the initial wave of star formation. But this study is the first to quantify the effect that they have. The team used the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the orbiting observatory to get data.

Tiny galaxies were common some 10 billion years ago. Astronomers classify some of them as starburst galaxies which are galaxies that produce starts at rates higher than normal. Due to their size, it wasn’t possible to study dwarfs at great distances. WFC3 and infrared spectrometer has enabled astronomers study even the small galaxies.

“These galaxies are forming stars so quickly they could actually double their entire mass of stars in only 150 million years, an incredibly short astronomical timescale,” said Jean-Paul Kneib of EPFL

Most galaxies take up to 3 billion years to achieve the same growth. They sometimes merge with other formations which increases the amount of gases in the system.

Astronomers suggest that starburst galaxies may form after the merging of two galaxies. Others say gravitational forces from other galaxies could be the force behind formation of starbursts.

As stars age and die, the stellar material goes into the surrounding space. Most dwarf galaxies contain a few billion stars as compared to 200-400 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Big Bang Theory to undergo intense scrutiny

The Big Bang theory, which has suffered an inconsistent flux between support and criticism, is about to undergo intense scrutiny.

In March, a team of astronomers announced that they caught primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, which they believed was left over from the Big Bang. This was one of the findings that helped best solidify the Big Bang theory's standing in the study of the creation of the universe.

Some scientists have expressed skepticism and they believe that the finding translates to patterns of dust created by our own Milky Way galaxy. "It could be possible all the signal was coming from dust. Not that one could be sure, but that was a possibility. That was a big letdown for me," said Astrophysicist Matias Zaldarriaga of the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.

In a new study led by John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, some new information about the Milky Way dust has come to light. The team does not rule out the possibility of foreground dust contamination.

The issue whether what they measured comes from gravity waves in the early universe or from the dust remains unresolved, said Alan Guth, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who came up with the inflation idea in the late 1970s.

Andrei Linde, a theoretical physicist from Stanford University said, "Whatever we learn will be hugely important for the further development of cosmology, and we are going to know the final answer before too long."

Mystery of dazzling supernova solved

Astronomers have solved the mystery of a super luminous supernova, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They contend that the supernova, called PS1-10afx, is extremely bright because a lens in the sky magnified its light.

“PS1-10afx is like nothing we have seen before,” noted senior author Robert Quimby of the University of Tokyo’s Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe.

According to Georgia State University, a supernova is an explosion of a massive super giant star. It may shine with the luminosity of 10 billions suns and its total energy output may be as much as the total output of the sun during its 10 billion year lifetime.

The discovery of PS1-10afx led to two competing theories: Some said that the supernova was a new kind of extremely bright supernova, while others said it was a normal Type Ia supernovae magnified by a lens in close proximity. NOVA notes that Type Ia supernovae originate in binary star systems.

While PS1-10afx faded away before astronomers could use it, they believe that future lensed supernova events may offer an opportunity to measure expansion in the universe.

Click here to read more. Also find out how this discovery helps settle an important controversy in astronomy.

Scientists discover 15 massive galaxies filled with mature and old stars

An international group of astronomers has discovered 15 massive, mature galaxies located where they shouldn't be: at an average distance of 12 billion light years away from us.

At that age — a mere 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang – galaxies should be youthful entities, still gathering dust and gasses into stars. These 15, on the other hand, as observed today, are grown-ups filled with old stars and exhibiting a lack of active star formation.

"Their existence at such an early time raises new questions about what forced them to grow up so quickly," the Carnegie Institution for Science notes in a press release. The results of the observational study, conducted over 40 nights at the Magellan Baade Telescope at Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's Atacama high desert, are published in a paper in the current issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The observations were done in the near-infrared spectrum, and focused on the Chandra Deep Field South, which had earlier been explored by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, self-described as "NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy." In the near-infrared, Carnegie says, "they are easily measured" and "it can be inferred that they already contained as many as 100 billion stars on average per galaxy."

These mature galaxies are similar in mass to our own Milky Way, which is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, and in which stars are still being formed albeit at a leisurely rate. In these newly explored distant galaxies, however, stars must have formed exceedingly rapidly to be as mature as they were at a mere 1.6 billion years.

What was the mechanism that caused these galaxies to form stars so quickly? And why – and how – did they reach maturity so soon after they were Big Banged into existence? Those questions will require further study and cosmological boffinary head-scratching.

To read more, click here or watch the video here.

Can monster black holes kill galactic star formation?

Supermassive black holes could be quenching star formation in elliptical galaxies, forcing them to appear "red and dead," a new study reports.

Astronomers have long wondered why giant elliptical galaxies stop forming stars, becoming dominated over time with small, long-lived stars with a distinctive reddish tinge. Conventional wisdom had held that these galaxies lack the cold gas necessary for star birth.

But new observations suggest that a rethink is in order. Some big ellipticals do indeed harbor large amounts of cold gas — but these reservoirs likely get heated up or driven off by powerful jets of material blasted out by supermassive black holes, which lurk at the heart of most if not all galaxies.

The study's lead author Norbert Werner of Stanford University and his colleagues studied eight giant elliptical galaxies using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. They found that six of the eight have lots of cold gas, which Herschel detected as far-infrared emissions from carbon ions and oxygen atoms.

The team then investigated the galaxies' stockpiles of hotter gas, looking at optical images as well as X-ray data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

They determined that, in the six galaxies with large quantities of cold gas, the hotter stuff is cooling down, as predicted by theory — but the cooling process has stopped for some reason. In the two galaxies without cold gas, the hot material seems not to be cooling down at all, researchers said.

Click here to read more or look at stunning pictures of a black hole here.

Four new Earth-like planets discovered

The search for 'Earth 2.0' – another watery planet with life – has come a step closer with the discovery of 715 planets orbiting stars beyond our own solar system, according to NASA scientists.

The latest results from NASA's programme to find "exoplanets" lend further support to the idea that the Milky Way – which is just one galaxy of many billions – is teeming with planets, many of which are similar to our own.

Scientists identified the new planets using a new statistical method to analyse data gathered by the €438m Kepler telescope, which was launched in 2009. This has almost overnight boosted the total number of confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way to about 1,700 – with another 3,500 candidate planets waiting to be confirmed. The total number of habitable exoplanets has now reached nine.

The very first extra-solar planet was identified about 20 years ago and since then, there has been a revolution in the way that astronomers can identify the tiny perturbations in starlight they create as they orbit their own stars.

To read more, click here.

New supernova appears in nearby galaxy

A new supernova suddenly appeared in a nearby galaxy this week, at least 12 million light-years away.

This is the closest star explosion to be spotted from Earth in at least 20 years, and it has captured the attention of stargazers.

Professional astronomers and amateur sky watchers have captured images of the brilliant star explosion, which was discovered by students at the University College London.

You can watch a video of the explosion here.

Astronomers spot Neptune-sized exo-planet

Astronomers have spotted a new exo-planet, the size of Neptune, with the help of a bright star, which is expected to help researchers understand this double star system better.

The double star system in question is about 425 light-years from Earth. Astronomers first spotted the planet by studying the star around which the planet revolves. Named Kepler 410A b, the planet was well-studied due to the brightness of the star. In fact, the star itself can be seen if binoculars are used.

The planet orbits one star of what appears to be a binary star. The orbit itself isn't circular, but is instead slightly eccentric. With a period of around 18 days, the planet is much closer to its star than Earth is to our sun. This means that it's highly unlikely that the planet would be suitable for life due to its high temperature.

Currently, there are about 1,000 known exo-planets. Yet what makes Kepler-410A b unusual is that it can be studied in detailed. It's been observed for four years with the Kepler space telescope.

The findings reveal a little bit more about this star system, and pave the way for future studies. Astronomers currently believe there's another planet in the system, but they haven't yet spotted it.

Click here to read more.

Astronomers find water vapor around planet Ceres

The Herschel space observatory has found water vapor around Ceres, the first definitive discovery of water vapor around an object in the asteroid belt, according to the European Space Agency.

Ceres is the biggest object in the asteroid belt positioned between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Nearly spherical, Ceres belongs to the category of “dwarf planets,” which also includes Pluto among its members.

Ceres is said to be layered, likely with a rocky core and an icy outer mantle. This is significant given that the water-ice content of the asteroid belt has major ramifications. Water in the asteroid belt has been foreshadowed by the observation of comet-like activity around some asteroids, but no definitive detection of water vapor has ever been made.

Now, utilizing Herschel to examine Ceres, astronomers have gathered data that suggest water vapor being discharged from the icy world’s surface. According to lead author Michael Küppers of ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre, this is the first time water has been detected in the asteroid belt. This provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere, he said.

The astronomers determined the distribution of water sources on the surface by observing differences in the water signal during the dwarf planet’s 9-hour rotation period. Nearly all of the water vapor was observed to be originating from just two locations on the surface.

One possibility is that water vapor is being generated through sublimation, by which ice is warmed and changes directly into gas, pulling the surface dust with it, and consequently revealing fresh ice underneath to keep the process going. The other possibility is that icy volcanoes play a role in Ceres’ activity.

Read more about the findings here.