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News from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

Started by Whitters, Dec 01, 2005, 21:48:48

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Whitters

NASA's Chandra Proves Black Hole Influence is Far Reaching

"Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered evidence of energetic
plumes – particles that extend 300,000 light years into a massive cluster of galaxies. The plumes
are due to explosive venting from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, and they provide
dramatic new evidence of the influence a black hole can have over intergalactic distances."

More: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18423

Rick

#1
Eta Carinae brightens Chandra's day

NASA has released a striking new image of explosive neighbouring star Eta Carinae. The star is huge: somewhere between 100 and 150 times the size of our own sun. It is also consuming its fuel at a truly astonishing rate.

The star is currently teetering along a knife edge, almost at equilibrium: its gravity just about balanced by the huge outward pressure generated by the nuclear furnace at its core. But the star is incredibly unstable, and the tiniest perturbation could cause a massive eruption of material.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21/eta_carinae_go_boom/

Carole

Heaviest Stellar Black Hole Discovered in Nearby Galaxy by Chandra

Astronomers have located an exceptionally massive black hole in orbit around a huge companion star. This result has intriguing implications for the evolution and ultimate fate of massive stars.

The black hole is part of a binary system in M33, a nearby galaxy about 3 million light years from Earth. By combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the mass of the black hole, known as M33 X-7, was determined to be 15.7 times that of the Sun. This makes M33 X-7 the most massive stellar black hole known. A stellar black hole is formed from the collapse of the core of a massive star at the end of its life.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/07-112.html

Carole

Rick

#3
Supersized stellar blackhole prompts model rewrite

Researchers have located the most massive stellar black hole ever discovered, just three million light-years away in a nearby galaxy. The stellar remnant is in a binary system known as M33, orbiting a huge companion star. The researchers say the find is "intriguing", because of what it suggests about stellar evolution.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/18/blackhole_supersized/

Rick

#4
Ancient pulsar still radiating like a young 'un

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected what the agency describes as a "surprisingly active" ancient pulsar - the oldest such body ever spied in the X-ray band and still radiating after around 200m years.

PSR J0108-1431, aka J0108 for those in a hurry, lies at around 770 light-years from Earth. It's an "isolated" pulsar (not caught up in a binary system) formed when a star substantially more massive than our own Sun collapsed in a supernova event to form a diminutive but very dense, rapidly-spinning neutron star.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/03/ancient_pulsar/

Rick

#5
Stargazers spy elusive binary black hole system

Astronomers at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) believe they've spotted a binary black hole system - two monsters orbiting each other at the centre of a quasar* 5bn light-years from Earth.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/05/binary_black_hole/

mickw

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mickw

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows. So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.

And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second -- as pulsars do -- spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090404-chandra-nebula.html
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mickw

An interstellar pileup involving four galaxy clusters has become the most crowded cluster collision ever detected.

Astronomers spotted the galaxy clusters involved in a triple merger, the first time that such a phenomenon has been recorded. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope joined the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to safely observe the mess from 5.4 billion light years away.

The cosmic collision is taking place in MACSJ0717, a 13 million-light-year-long stream of galaxies, gas and dark matter known as a filament. That filamentary freeway continues to pour galaxies and other matter into a region already full of galaxies.

"In addition to this enormous pileup, MACSJ0717 is also remarkable because of its temperature," said Cheng-Jiun Ma, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. "Since each of these collisions releases energy in the form of heat, MACS0717 has one of the highest temperatures ever seen in such a system."

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090416-galaxy-crowd.html
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Rick

Deployed by the space shuttle on 23 July 1999, the Chandra telescope is Nasa's flagship mission exploring the realms of X-ray astronomy.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8163008.stm

Rick

A group of galaxies has been seen at a record distance from Earth thanks to the assistance of Bristol scientists.

The cluster, named JKCS041, is 10.2 billion light-years away - a billion light-years further away than the current record holder.

Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory made the discovery with other telescopes.

"It's like finding a T. Rex fossil that's much older than any other known," said Dr Ben Maughan, from the University of Bristol.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/8320570.stm

mickw

#11
Like the smoke left in the sky after a round of fireworks, debris remaining in the wake of a supernova could reveal exactly how that star exploded even though hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

That's what scientists have determined from images of such leftovers taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

"It's almost like the supernova remnants have a 'memory' of the original explosion," said lead researcher Laura Lopez of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This is the first time anyone has systematically compared the shape of these remnants in X-rays in this way."

More on Space.com
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mickw

A bullet-shaped object can be seen rocketing out of the huge explosion from a dying star in a new image taken by a powerful X-ray space telescope.

The new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows N49, the aftermath of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that neighbors our own Milky Way.

The cosmic bullet in the scene was caught when astronomers used Chandra for over 30 hours to get a long exposure. [Gallery - The X-ray Universe.]

More:   Bullet
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Rick

A small black hole has been observed blowing a vast bubble of hot gas 1,000 light-years across.

The gas is expanding because it is being heated by powerful particle "jets" being released by the black hole.

The observations were made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile and Nasa's Chandra space observatory.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10555633.stm

mickw

A galactic "supervolcano" in the massive galaxy M87 is erupting, blasting gas outwards. The cosmic volcano — driven by a giant black hole in M87's center — is preventing hundreds of millions of new stars from forming.

An image, taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array, captures the drama in action. [Photo of the galactic "supervolcano."]

"Our results show in great detail that supermassive black holes have a surprisingly good control over the evolution of the galaxies in which they live," said Norbert Werner of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Melo Park, Calif., who led one of two studies of M87's black hole and its effects. "The black hole's reach extends ever farther into the entire cluster, similar to how one small volcano can affect practically an entire hemisphere on Earth."

More:   M87
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Rick

NASA'S Chandra Finds Nearest Pair Of Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon.

The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-11-278.html

Rick

NASA's Chandra Suggests Rare Explosion Created Our Galaxy's Youngest Black Hole

New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star.

The remnant, called W49B, is about a thousand years old as seen from Earth and located about 26,000 light-years away.

"W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy," said Laura Lopez, who led the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It appears its parent star ended its life in a way that most others don't."

More: http://chandra.si.edu/press/13_releases/press_021313.html

Rick

NASA's Chandra Turns Up Black Hole Bonanza in Galaxy Next Door

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unprecedented bonanza of black holes in the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way.

Using more than 150 Chandra observations, spread over 13 years, researchers identified 26 black hole candidates, the largest number to date, in a galaxy outside our own. Many consider Andromeda to be a sister galaxy to the Milky Way. The two ultimately will collide, several billion years from now.

"While we are excited to find so many black holes in Andromeda, we think it's just the tip of the iceberg," said Robin Barnard of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., and lead author of a new paper describing these results. "Most black holes won't have close companions and will be invisible to us."

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/bonanza.html

Rick

Chandra & XMM-Newton Provide Direct Measurement of Distant Black Hole's Spin

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly. This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time.

More: http://chandra.si.edu/press/14_releases/press_030514.html and http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2014/rxj1131/

Rick

NASA's Chandra Observatory Delivers New Insight Into Formation of Star Clusters

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes, astronomers have made an important advance in the understanding of how clusters of stars come into being.

The data show early notions of how star clusters are formed cannot be correct. The simplest idea is stars form into clusters when a giant cloud of gas and dust condenses. The center of the cloud pulls in material from its surroundings until it becomes dense enough to trigger star formation. This process occurs in the center of the cloud first, implying that the stars in the middle of the cluster form first and, therefore, are the oldest.

However, the latest data from Chandra suggest something else is happening. Researchers studied two clusters where sun-like stars currently are forming – NGC 2024, located in the center of the Flame Nebula, and the Orion Nebula Cluster.  From this study, they discovered the stars on the outskirts of the clusters actually are the oldest.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/star-cluster-formation.html

Rick

NASA'S Chandra Observatory Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth

he same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars' birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity.  These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are immersed in gas with temperatures of millions of degrees.

This hot gas, which is the heftiest component of the galaxy clusters aside from unseen dark matter, glows brightly in X-ray light detected by Chandra. Over time, the gas in the centers of these clusters should cool enough that stars form at prodigious rates. However, this is not what astronomers have observed in many galaxy clusters.

"We knew that somehow the gas in clusters is being heated to prevent it cooling and forming stars. The question was exactly how," said Irina Zhuravleva of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the study that appears in the latest online issue of the journal Nature. "We think we may have found evidence that the heat is channeled from turbulent motions, which we identify from signatures recorded in X-ray images."

More from NASA

Rick

NASA's Chandra Detects Record-Breaking Outburst from Milky Way's Black Hole

On September 14, 2013, astronomers caught the largest X-ray flare ever detected from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This event, which was captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, was 400 times brighter than the usual X-ray output from Sgr A*, as described in our press release. The main portion of this graphic shows the area around Sgr A* in a Chandra image where low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are red, green, and blue respectively. The inset box contains an X-ray movie of the region close to Sgr A* and shows the giant flare, along with much steadier X-ray emission from a nearby magnetar, to the lower left. A magnetar is a neutron star with a strong magnetic field. A little more than a year later, astronomers saw another flare from Sgr A* that was 200 times brighter than its normal state in October 2014.

More: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/sgra/

Rick

NASA's Chandra Observatory Finds Cosmic Showers Halt Galaxy Growth

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found that the growth of galaxies containing supermassive black holes can be slowed down by a phenomenon referred to as cosmic precipitation.

Cosmic precipitation is not a weather event, as we commonly associate the word -- rain, sleet, or snow. Rather, it is a mechanism that allows hot gas to produce showers of cool gas clouds that fall into a galaxy. Researchers have analyzed X-rays from more than 200 galaxy clusters, and believe that this gaseous precipitation is key to understanding how giant black holes affect the growth of galaxies.

"We know that precipitation can slow us down on our way to work," said Mark Voit of Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, lead author of the paper that appears in the latest issue of Nature. "Now we have evidence that it can also slow down star formation in galaxies with huge black holes."

Astronomers have long pursued the quest to understand how supermassive black holes, which can be millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun, affect their host galaxies.

More from NASA
See also: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/a2597/

Rick

NASA's Chandra Captures X-Ray Echoes Pinpointing Distant Neutron Star

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the largest and brightest set of rings from X-ray light echoes ever observed. These extraordinary rings, produced by an intense flare from a neutron star, provide astronomers a rare chance to determine how far across the Milky Way galaxy the star is from Earth.

The rings appear as circles around Circinus X-1, a double star system in the plane of our galaxy containing a neutron star, the dense remnant of a massive star pulverized in a supernova explosion. The neutron star is in orbit with another massive star, and is shrouded by thick clouds of interstellar gas and dust. Circinus X-1 is also the source of a surprisingly powerful jet of high-energy particles.

"It's really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only have a handful of methods," said Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led the study. "But just as bats use sonar to triangulate their location, we can use the X-rays from Circinus X-1 to figure out exactly where it is."

More from NASA
See also: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/cirx1/