September 16, 2009 - United Press International
U.S. astronomers say they've used one of the world's most advanced new telescopic instruments to gather images of the Milky Way's "supermassive" black hole.
A team led by University of Florida astronomy Professor Stephen Eikenberry says it used a university-designed and built camera-spectrometer affixed to the Gemini South telescope in Chile to take its "first light" images of the supermassive black hole located at the center of our galaxy. That black hole is thought to be as massive as 4 million suns put together, the scientists said.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Sophisticated Telescope Camera Debuts With Peek At Nest Of Black Holes
September 15, 2009 - ScienceDaily
A team led by astronomy professor Stephen Eikenberry late last week captured the first images of the cosmos ever made with a UF-designed and built camera/spectrometer affixed to the Gemini South telescope in Chile. The handful of “first light” images include a yellow and blue orb-like structure that depicts our Milky Way galaxy, home to thousands of black holes – including, at its core, a “supermassive” black hole thought to be as massive as 4 million suns put together.
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Galaxies Embraced in Cosmic Waltz
September 3, 2009 - LiveScience.com
This view reveals spectacular details of the interacting galaxy pair, NGC 1532 and NGC 1531, embraced in a fiery waltz. NGC 1532 and NGC 1531 were imaged using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) at Gemini South in Chile on Dec. 5, 2004.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Hyperactive stars move at twice speed of sun
MSNBC - August 5, 2009
Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers say.
These hyperactive stars move at about twice the speed of our sun through the Milky Way, because their host galaxy is very massive, yet strangely compact. The scene, which has theorists baffled, is 11 billion light-years away. It is the first time motions of individual stars have been measured in a galaxy so distant.
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Scientists used the new velocity measurements, conducted with the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, to test the mass of a galaxy identified as 1255-0. The same way that the sun's gravity determines the orbiting speed of the Earth, the galaxy's gravity, and thus its mass, determines the velocities of the stars inside it.
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Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers say.
These hyperactive stars move at about twice the speed of our sun through the Milky Way, because their host galaxy is very massive, yet strangely compact. The scene, which has theorists baffled, is 11 billion light-years away. It is the first time motions of individual stars have been measured in a galaxy so distant.
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Scientists used the new velocity measurements, conducted with the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, to test the mass of a galaxy identified as 1255-0. The same way that the sun's gravity determines the orbiting speed of the Earth, the galaxy's gravity, and thus its mass, determines the velocities of the stars inside it.
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Rocking the cradle
The Economist - August 13, 2009
IN THE crazy world of Dr Seuss, an American children’s author, a bird called a Pelf lays eggs that are three times as big as herself. At this week’s meeting of the International Astronomical Union, astronomers were asked to entertain equally odd thoughts when they were presented with the latest evidence that some early galaxies, although smaller than their more recent counterparts, contain much more mass. It is like being handed a baby that weighs three times as much as its mother.
The objects in question are “red compact” galaxies, in particular a well-studied one called 1255-0 that formed just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. As the universe is thought to be 13.7 billion years old, the light reaching Earth from this galaxy shows what it was like some 10.7 billion years ago, when it was the equivalent of a newborn. Images suggest that the galaxy is 3,000 light years across—just a fifth of the size of the Earth’s home galaxy, the Milky Way—but about four times as massive.
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IN THE crazy world of Dr Seuss, an American children’s author, a bird called a Pelf lays eggs that are three times as big as herself. At this week’s meeting of the International Astronomical Union, astronomers were asked to entertain equally odd thoughts when they were presented with the latest evidence that some early galaxies, although smaller than their more recent counterparts, contain much more mass. It is like being handed a baby that weighs three times as much as its mother.
The objects in question are “red compact” galaxies, in particular a well-studied one called 1255-0 that formed just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. As the universe is thought to be 13.7 billion years old, the light reaching Earth from this galaxy shows what it was like some 10.7 billion years ago, when it was the equivalent of a newborn. Images suggest that the galaxy is 3,000 light years across—just a fifth of the size of the Earth’s home galaxy, the Milky Way—but about four times as massive.
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Mystery storm clouds on Saturn's largest moon appear
Los Anageles Times - August 14, 2009
At last, the missing storm clouds on Saturn's moon Titan may have been found.
In the last decade, researchers have monitored clouds at both of Titan's poles, where large lakes of methane have been spotted by Earth-based observers and by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the moon for the last three years. But the moon's clouds seemed inexplicably confined to those areas.
"We've seen a lot of clouds at the poles. But we'd never seen a major storm at the equator," said Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech.
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In April 2008, Schaller was using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to track daily weather activity on Titan. One day, after weeks of frustration, she checked the data from the previous night and found that "Titan suddenly had the biggest clouds ever."
After that, Brown, Schaller and their colleagues began tracking the clouds with the giant Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea. Brown said the first cloud appeared in the tropics and rapidly spread around the moon.
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At last, the missing storm clouds on Saturn's moon Titan may have been found.
In the last decade, researchers have monitored clouds at both of Titan's poles, where large lakes of methane have been spotted by Earth-based observers and by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the moon for the last three years. But the moon's clouds seemed inexplicably confined to those areas.
"We've seen a lot of clouds at the poles. But we'd never seen a major storm at the equator," said Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech.
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In April 2008, Schaller was using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to track daily weather activity on Titan. One day, after weeks of frustration, she checked the data from the previous night and found that "Titan suddenly had the biggest clouds ever."
After that, Brown, Schaller and their colleagues began tracking the clouds with the giant Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea. Brown said the first cloud appeared in the tropics and rapidly spread around the moon.
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Friday, August 14, 2009
Scientists discover storms in the tropics of Titan
Astronomy.com - August 13, 2009
For all its similarities to Earth-clouds that pour rain — albeit liquid methane not liquid water — onto the surface producing lakes and rivers, vast dune fields in desert-like regions, plus a smoggy orange atmosphere, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is generally "a very bland place," according to Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
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The day after the telescope's big find, Schaller, Brown, and Roe began tracking the clouds with the large Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea and watched this system evolve for a month. "And what a cool show it was," Brown said.
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For all its similarities to Earth-clouds that pour rain — albeit liquid methane not liquid water — onto the surface producing lakes and rivers, vast dune fields in desert-like regions, plus a smoggy orange atmosphere, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is generally "a very bland place," according to Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
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The day after the telescope's big find, Schaller, Brown, and Roe began tracking the clouds with the large Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea and watched this system evolve for a month. "And what a cool show it was," Brown said.
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