Stellary Starry Universe

 

Telescopes reveal 3-D views of more than one hundred remote galaxies.

The Hubble Space Telescope can scope out the structure of faraway galaxies, while the European Southern Observatory’s VLT can use a spectrograph to reveal the motions of galactic gases. The combined 3-D view of ancient galaxies halfway across the known universe allows astronomers to trace mass and orbits relatively accurately.

“This unique combination of Hubble and the VLT allows us to model distant galaxies almost as nicely as we can close ones,” said Francois Hammer, an astronomer with the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France. [...]

 

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

VLT captures oddball galaxy, supernova and asteroids in same image.

The Very Large Telescope has taken one of the best ever images of two galaxies locked in a slow motion, disruptive collision, scientists say.

The image has also given astronomers a peak at an unusual exploding star in the same area of the sky. Both interacting galaxies were probably dwarfs not unlike the Magellanic Clouds orbiting our own galaxy. [...]

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

LONDON: An intense star-forming region that produces a combined mass of more than one thousand solar masses a year has been found 12.8 billion light-years from Earth.

The so-called ‘hyper-starburst’ is part of a young, quasar-containing galaxy. Because it is so far away, we can only see how the galaxy appeared far into the past, when the universe was less than a billion years old.

Limits of physics

This fledgling galaxy produces 1,000 times more star matter than our galaxy, and within a diameter of just 4,000 light-years, compared with the Milky Way’s 100,000 light-years.

It helps confirm a theory that young galaxies can grow massive very rapidly.

“The star-forming rate we observed is as high as it gets,” said lead author Fabian Walter, a astrophysicist from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. “Physics wouldn’t allow a higher star-formation rate.” [...]

 

Source: Cosmos Online – click here for full article

 

 

BRISBANE: Supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies may form before the galaxies themselves, a new study has found.

The central bulge of a galaxy usually has a thousand times more mass than the black hole at its centre, but that this isn’t the case in very young galaxies, an international team reported yesterday to a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California.

Efficient growth

Instead, the black holes are relatively much larger in baby galaxies, hinting that the holes came first. That changes the way astronomers will think about the growth and evolution of galaxies, according to team member Dominik Riechers.

“Our findings show that… a simple regulating process that allows simultaneous growth cannot be the only reason for the relationship [between black holes and bulges],” said Riechers, an astronomer at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA.

“Even if we look at the most extreme, rapid star-forming events in the universe, those are less [fast and] efficient than the growth of massive black holes,” he said.

To make the discovery, Reicher’s team studied conditions during the first billion years of the universe using the Very Large Array radio observatory in New Mexico, and the Interferometer at Plateau de Bure in France.

Source: Cosmos Online – click here for full article