NASA finds, Giant Ring of Black Holes

image: www.nasa.gov

WASHINGTON : NASA scientists have discovered a giant ring of black holes - The composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light-years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md.

Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left. This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars.

These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes. A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions.

The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun. An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image.

Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy. Infrared observations with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring.

These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth’s time frame. These results were published in the October 1, 2010, issue of The Astrophysical Journal. (ANI)

Giant Ring of Black Holes


link : http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/arp147/

NASA clicks first 3D image of the sun

LONDON: A NASA-led mission has provided the world’s first ever 3D image of the sun’s surface.

Two satellites orbiting the sun perfectly aligned on opposite sides for the first time and took images that created the most complete picture ever of its surface. Scientists, including those from Britain’s Rutherford Appleton Lab in Oxfordshire, believe the photo is as significant as those taken of the first men on the moon and the first ever images of our planet from outer space, the Telegraph reports.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, led by the US’ space agency NASA, launched the two satellites in 2006 and they have been orbiting the sun ever since, according to a NASA statement. The satellites are travelling at different speeds and so every few years they achieve 180 degrees of separation on exactly opposite sides of the sun.

FIRST 3D IMAGE OF THE SUN





Chris Davis, project scientist for UK research, said: “The STEREO mission has already shown us some wonderful sights, solar eruptions arriving at the Earth to comets struggling against the solar wind. “Im very excited about this new stage of the mission and am looking forward to many years of unique observations, he added. (IANS/BBC)

Spesifikasi Samsung Galaxy S2 I9200, 2GHz, 720p Super AMOLED Display

It’s a slow news day, so lets dabble our feet in the murky rumor waters for a while and take a look at what we’re told is the Samsung Galaxy S2 i9200. The tipped successor to the Galaxy S, and supposedly due in early 2011, according to the talk circulating Russian forum itrans the Galaxy S2 is said to have a whopping 4.3-inch 1,280 x 720 Super AMOLED display with around 340 pixels per inch, certainly intruding into Apple’s Retina Display realm.

Meanwhile there’s also supposedly a 2GHz CPU paired with 1GB of RAM and a 4GB ROM, together with 32GB of flash storage and a microSD card slot. The camera is said to be 8-megapixels capable of not just 720p but 1080p Full HD video recording, and the OS to be Android “Gingerbread” which we’ve heard is expected to drop in Q4 this year. Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0, while there’s also A-GPS, an accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and ambient light sensors.

Now, we’re obviously in skeptic-mode at what’s undoubtedly a bulging spec list. The display and the processor are probably the most unbelievable aspects, though Samsung are tipped to be starting mass production at a new, 5th-gen AMOLED plant in Q1 2011. We’re guessing that the 2GHz processor mentioned would be a new version of Samsung’s own Hummingbird chip, though we’re yet to hear of one running at that speed. All in all, plenty of reason to doubt the rumors, but we can’t help but wish they’d come true.
via: slashgear.com

Scientists/Astronomers Discover Hottest Planet Ever Found

Nasa Image, Click To enlarge

LONDON: An exoplanet has been found to be the hottest planet discovered so far with a record-breaking temperature of 3,200 degrees Celsius. The planet WASP-33b, is also known as HD15082. Its scorching temperature is explained by its close orbit around its star, itself one of the hottest planet-hosting stars at 7,160 degrees Celsius, the New Scientist reports.

Scientists were first alerted to WASP-33b’s existence in 2006, after observing regularly timed dimmings of its parent star. This was caused by the planet, four-and-a-half times the size of Jupiter, orbiting its star at less than seven percent the distance of Mercury from the Sun, according to the Daily Mail.

This is not to be scoffed at considering the star’s temperature of 7,160 degrees Celsius dwarfs the sun’s 5,600 degrees Celsius. A study led by Alexis Smith of Keele University in Staffordshire, Britain, discovered WASP-33b’s thermal emission using an infrared camera on the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands. Its temperature is 900 degrees Celsius hotter than what was formerly the hottest known planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists believe that the planet, called WASP-12b and which lies 600 light-years away from Earth, may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured. (IANS)

Hubble Telescope Spot "Most Distant and Ancient Galaxy Ever Seen"

US and European researchers trying to peer back to the beginnings of the universe said on Wednesday they have spotted what they think is the most ancient galaxy ever seen – 13.2 billion years old, Reach Hubble [2], which corresponds to a redshift around 10.

Called UDFj-39546284, this galaxy most likely contains blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang. “We’re seeing huge changes in the rate of star birth that tell us that if we go a little further back in time we’re going to see even more dramatic changes,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The new find indicates that the rate at which galaxies were forming stars was increasing by a factor of ten over the 170 million years that elapsed between the era of this newly discovered candidate galaxy and that of the population of previously identified galaxies at a redshift around 8 (650 million years after the Big Bang). “These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the likely nature of the earlier generation of primeval objects that we are yet to find,” added Rychard Bouwens of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures, and although its individual stars can’t be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests that this is a compact galaxy of hot stars that first started to form over 100-200 million years earlier, from gas trapped in a pocket of dark matter. The team has reported the find in the 27 January issue of Nature. (ANI)

2010-NASA Space Photos' Absolutely You Don’t Want to Miss - 26 Pics

Beautiful And Scary Nasa Space Photos :

1. The International Space Station against the moon

2.  Space Shuttle Atlantis docked at Space Station

3. Space Shuttle Discovery with Earth in the background

4. The Manam Volcano Islands

5. Even space debris looks cool

6. The McNaught Comet racing through space

7. Far away Spiral Galaxies claimed to have earth-type planets with human life

8. Satellite orbiting like a boss

9. Shadows fom Saturn's rings

10. The Star of Bethlehem

11. Space Shuttle Endeavor at sunset

12. The Sun is alive

13. This is not from space, I found this rock in my yard. Ok, it Asteroid Letutia.

14. Martian forest on Mars

15. One of Saturn's moons

16. Spiral Galaxy of constellation Ursa Major

17. Gas bubbles in the deep space

18. Total solar eclipse

19. Astronaut Nicholas Patrick swimming in space

20. Gulf oil disaster looks like you could wipe it up with a rag from here

21. Sun Spot up close.

22. Space Nebula

23. Looking down on Auroras from space

24. Dual-core comet Hartley

25. City lights of Italy and Greece

26. Space Medusa

Supermassive Black Hole Discovered in "Dwarf Galaxy"

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole in a small nearby galaxy that may shed light on how black holes and galaxies may have grown in the early history of the Universe. They said that finding a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun in a star-forming dwarf galaxy is a strong indication that supermassive black holes formed before the buildup of galaxies.

The galaxy, called Henize 2-10, 30 million light-years from Earth, has been studied for years, and is forming stars very rapidly. “This galaxy gives us important clues about a very early phase of galaxy evolution that has not been observed before,” said Amy Reines, of the University of Virginia.

“Now, we have found a dwarf galaxy with no bulge at all, yet it has a supermassive black hole. This greatly strengthens the case for the black holes developing first, before the galaxy’s bulge is formed,” said Reines. The researchers found a region near the center of the galaxy that strongly emits radio waves with characteristics of those emitted by super-fast “jets” of material spewed outward from areas close to a black hole.

They then searched images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory that showed this same, radio-bright region to be strongly emitting energetic X-rays. This combination indicates an active, black-hole-powered, galactic nucleus, they said. While central black holes of roughly the same mass as the one in Henize 2-10 have been found in other galaxies, those galaxies all have much more regular shapes.

Henize 2-10 differs not only in its irregular shape and small size but also in its furious star formation, concentrated in numerous, very dense “super star clusters.” “This galaxy probably resembles those in the very young Universe, when galaxies were just starting to form and were colliding frequently. All its properties, including the supermassive black hole, are giving us important new clues about how these black holes and galaxies formed at that time,” said Johnson. (ANI)