The Young Astronomers
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The ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has captured this fantastic image of the Ladon Basin, specifically of this spectacular double impact crater:
Sigli and Shambe Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
The pair are named Sigli and Shambe and are believed to have been formed by a single object that broke into two larch fragments just before impacting the surface of Mars.
The shape and shallow nature of the impact crater suggest that it was formed when an asteroid or comet hits a planet at a reasonably shallow angle.
This particular pair is 16km across and shows significant fracturing of the crater floor. The pair also show signs of being partially filled with sedimentary material at some point after their formation. This implies that they may well have been lakes, as such material is only deposited under water, hinting once more of Mars’ more environmentally pleasant past.
You can read more about this image here
NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory has produced a spectacular image of the spiral galaxy M83:
Chandra’s view of M87 and SN 1957D Credit: NASA/CXC/STScI/K.Long et al.
The primary target of the image wasn’t the galaxy itself but a supernova remnant within – the remains of SN 1957D
This supernova remnant had previously been detected in both visible and the infra-red though had previously eluded detection in x-rays (Chandra’s first attempt to capture the object in 2000-2001 met with disappointment). This image is the end result of nearly eight and a half days of data collection using Chandra, a truly marathon effort (the observation was completed in stages during 2010 and 2011 rather than in one massive event).
The image show a wide range of X-rays, with low energy rays displayed in red, medium energy in green and those with the highest energies displayed here in blues.
The Chandra team has also produced an annotated version of the image showing the location of the remnant and you can see this below:
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/STScI/K.Long et al., Optical: NASA/STScI
The type of X-ray emission detected from the remnant strongly suggests that it contains a rapidly spinning neutron star – a pulsar. This potentially makes it the youngest pulsar ever observed, positively confirmed as one just 55 years after it was formed (discounting the time it has taken the light to reach us here on Earth). It is potentially the youngest ever observed as there is another contender – SN 1979C – though as of yet astronomers aren’t quite sure if it is indeed a pulsar or a black hole.
M83 itself sits about 15 million light years from us in the direction of the constellation Hydra. It is one of the brightest galaxies visible from Earth and can be observed through binoculars.
M83 Credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler, S. Guisard and C. Thöne
You can read more here
A new image from NASA’s WISE mission has been released showing the beauty of a region of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex known as the Flame Nebula.
The Flame Nebula as seen by WISE Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The nebula is glowing with infra-red light thanks in no small part to a star 20 times the mass of our own sun that is blanketed with a dense surround of dust and gas. The star churns out vast quantities of energy that warm the dust causing it in turn to give of the infra-red light that has been collected to form this image.
The surrounding dust is so dense it causes the star to appear an amazing 4 billion times fainter to the naked eye than if it was free in space. Without this obscuring dust that star would appear as bright as the stars of Orion’s belt itself.
The smaller bright region about half way down the image is the nebula NGC 2023 – A reflection nebula surrounding a bright B class star
NGC 2023 Credit: Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF
Slightly below and to the right of NGC 2023, the tuft of protruding material is actually the famous Horsehead Nebula:
The Horsehead Nebula Credit: ESO
The final remarkable feature in this image is the bright red crescent in its lower right portion. This is the bowshock – a wave of material deflected out of the way of a moving star – of the star Sigma Orionis.
You can read more about this image here
The NASA\ESA Hubble Space Telescope has obtained the highest quality image of the globular cluster Messier 9 (M9) ever produced.
Messier 9 as seen by Hubble Credit: NASAESA
This glorious sphere of stars is far too faint to be detected by the human eye, yet Hubble can resolve it as upwards of a 1/4 of a million individual glistening stars.
M9 sits towards the centre of our own galaxy, and yet whilst relaivly close by in the grand scale of the universe it is still 25,000 light years from Earth.
The stars within M9 are twice the age of our own sun and are metal poor as a result – as they formed at a time when the cosmos was still largely deprived of the heavier elements like iron, oxygen and nickel.
The cluster was first discovered in 1764 by the French astronomer Charles Messier and was included as object 9 on his list of astronomical objects (hence its name!).
The image above covers and area of sky roughly equal to a pin head held at arms reach,a true testiment to the power of Hubble.
You can read more here
The galaxy cluster Abell 2052 is in a bit of a swirl.
Abell 2052 Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/BU/E.Blanton; Optical: ESO/VLT
The cluster is located at 489 million light years from Earth (z=0.03549)[1] in the direction of the constellation Serpens – The Serpent. Abell 2052 contains many galaxies with the brightest being UGC 9799, that also has a Seyfert 2 class AGN.[2]
UGC 9799 Credit: SDSS
The main image is a combination of X-ray data obtained by NASA’s Chandra Space Observatory and optical data from the ESO’s VLT.
X-ray data is displayed in blue, and shows hot gas at temperatures of around 30 million Kelvin, optical information is displayed in gold.
The large spiral of this superheated material in the centre of the image, which spans over one million light years in reality, was produced when a smaller galaxy cluster collided with the larger main cluster, throwing gas and dust outwards whilst heating it.
The smaller cluster passed through the main cluster several times under the action of gravity, with a spiral pattern being formed as the collisions were off centre – a perfectly lined up series of collisions would have produced a collisional ring.
The disturbance of the material has several effects on the galaxies:
- Cooler, denser gas is thrown outwards – this limits the ability of the material left in the core to cool and contract, thus limiting star formation
- Heavier elements such as Iron, Nitrogen and Oxygen are distributed throughout the region perhaps helping to stimulate the production of planets, and further down the line, life
You can read more here
[1] A description of how to interpret the z variable is pending. The distance estimate used in the post was calculated using WolframAlpha
[2] A detailed explanation on the various types of AGN is pending. Data for UGC 9799 was obtained using SIMBAD
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