The photo of a nearby star and its orbiting companion — whose temperature is like a hot summer day in Arizona — will be presented by Penn State Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kevin Luhman during the Signposts of Planets conference at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on Oct. 20, 2011.

A paper describing the discovery will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

“This planet-like companion is the coldest object ever directly photographed outside our solar system,” said Luhman, who led the discovery team. “Its mass is about the same as many of the known extra-solar planets — about six to nine times the mass of Jupiter — but in other ways it is more like a star. Essentially, what we have found is a very small star with an atmospheric temperature about cool as the Earth’s.”

Luhman classifies this object as a “brown dwarf,” an object that formed just like a star out of a massive cloud of dust and gas. But the mass that a brown dwarf accumulates is not enough to ignite thermonuclear reactions in its core, resulting in a failed star that is very cool. In the case of the new brown dwarf, the scientists have gauged the temperature of its surface to be between 80 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit — possibly as cool as a human.

(via Planet-sized object as cool as Earth revealed in record-breaking photo)

Berkeley Scientists Discover an “Instant Cosmic Classic” Supernova

A supernova discovered yesterday five days ago is closer to Earth — approximately 21 million light-years away — than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.

The finding of such a supernova so early and so close has energized the astronomical community as they are scrambling to observe it with as many telescopes as possible, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

Joshua Bloom, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, called it “the supernova of a generation.” Astronomers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, who made the discovery predict that it will be a target for research for the next decade, making it one of the most-studied supernova in history.

The supernova, dubbed PTF 11kly, occurred in the Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the “Big Dipper,” otherwise known as the Ursa Major constellation. It was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which is designed to observe and uncover astronomical events as they happen.

“We caught this supernova very soon after explosion. PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It’s already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday,” said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at Berkeley Lab who first spotted the supernova. Nugent is also an adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride. It is an instant cosmic classic.”

He credits supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a Department of Energy supercomputing center at Berkeley Lab, as well as high-speed networks with uncovering this rare event in the nick of time.

(via Berkeley Lab News Center)

Darkest Planet Found: Coal-Black, It Reflects Almost No Light

It may be hard to imagine a planet blacker than coal, but that’s what astronomers say they’ve discovered in our home galaxy with NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

Orbiting only about three million miles out from its star, the Jupiter-size gas giant planet, dubbed TrES-2b, is heated to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 degrees Celsius). Yet the apparently inky world appears to reflect almost none of the starlight that shines on it, according to a new study.

“Being less reflective than coal or even the blackest acrylic paint—this makes it by far the darkest planet ever discovered,” lead study author David Kipping said.

“If we could see it up close it would look like a near-black ball of gas, with a slight glowing red tinge to it—a true exotic amongst exoplanets,” added Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(via National Geographic)

scienceisbeauty:

On May 19th, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover’s 489th martian day, or sol. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol’s data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset. This small panorama of the western sky was obtained using Pancam’s 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer color filters. This filter combination allows false color images to be generated that are similar to what a human would see, but with the colors slightly exaggerated.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

Source: A Moment Frozen in Time, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Spectacular Time-Lapse Video of Australian Night Sky

An amateur astronomer from Australia created this stunning time-lapse video of the night sky over the ocean. It shows clouds streaming across the sky, star-spangled heavens and the oscillations of the tide. It took Alex Cherney of Victoria, Australia a year to compile the 30 hours of exposure.

(via Wired.com)

14-billion-years-later:

Why black holes emit radiation.

The mathematical theory that black holes emit radiation has been something that has often bothered me. Surely if something can pull even light into it then how can it actually emit anything? The reason they do is because of a concept in quantum theory known as virtual particles. I’d have to say they’re one of my favorite ideas because they fill so many gaps in my understanding of the universe. Virtual particles are basically a pair of particles than pop in and out of existence in a very short amount of time. The idea is that two particles appear and then quickly interact, annihilating each other in the process. However say a pair of virtual particles come into existence on the event horizon of a black hole. There can be 3 general solutions, either both particles are pulled in, neither of the particles are pulled in (and promptly annihilate each other) or only one of the particles is pulled in. If only one of the pair is pulled into the black hole then the other somewhat ceases to be virtual and can escape the black hole as radiation.

scienceisbeauty:

Solar eclipses are one of the most beautiful things that can see in this world, well, and safe you can say that the same in others.

Source: Stanford Solar Center (link)

scienceisbeauty:

Illustration of a Magnetar

This illustration show that a slowly rotating neutron star with an ordinary surface magnetic field is giving off bursts of X-rays and gamma rays.

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Source: Neutron Stars (Illustrations), Chandra X-ray Center

scienceisbeauty:

Astronomers have discovered evidence for physics beyond Einstein’s general relativity. This artist’s conception shows a galactic black hole being orbited by a ripple in spacetime—a distortion in the fabric of space itself.

Credit: Dana Berry (CfA/NASA)

Source: Going Beyond Einstein: Spacetime Wave Orbits Black Hole, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Astronomers Jon Miller (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Jeroen Homan (MIT) have seen evidence of hot iron gas riding a ripple in spacetime around a black hole. This spacetime wave, if confirmed, would represent a new phenomenon that goes beyond Einstein’s general relativity.

These observations confirm one important theory about how a black hole’s extreme gravity can stretch light. The data also paint an intriguing image of how a spinning black hole can drag the very fabric of space around with it, creating a choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole.

Astronomers Unveil Most Complete 3-D Map of Local Universe

Cambridge, MA - [On May 25th, 2011], astronomers unveiled the most complete 3-D map of the local universe (out to a distance of 380 million light-years) ever created. Taking more than 10 years to complete, the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) also is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys - a region that’s generally obscured by dust.

Karen Masters (University of Portsmouth, UK) presented the new map today in a press conference at the 218th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

“The 2MASS Redshift Survey is a wonderfully complete new look at the local universe - particularly near the Galactic plane,” Masters said. “We’re also honoring the legacy of the late John Huchra, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was a guiding force behind this and earlier galaxy redshift surveys.”

A galaxy’s light is redshifted, or stretched to longer wavelengths, by the expansion of the universe. The farther the galaxy, the greater its redshift, so redshift measurements yield galaxy distances - the vital third dimension in a 3-D map.

(via Research Blogging)

(IMAGE: Figure 2. An example of a smoothed ROSAT frame rejected due to uneven exposure/ high X-ray background variation. Seven such frames containing eleven filaments in total were rejected for this reason. [Still in the paper, though.])

Monash student finds Universe’s missing mass

A Monash student has made a breakthrough in the field of astrophysics, discovering what has until now been described as the Universe’s ‘missing mass’. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, working within a team at the Monash School of Physics, conducted a targeted X-ray search for the matter and within just three months found it – or at least some of it.

What makes the discovery all the more noteworthy is the fact that Ms Fraser-McKelvie is not a career researcher, or even studying at a postgraduate level. She is a 22-year-old undergraduate Aerospace Engineering/Science student who pinpointed the missing mass during a summer scholarship, working with two astrophysicists at the School of Physics, Dr Kevin Pimbblet and Dr Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway.

The School of Physics put out a call for students interested in a six-week paid astrophysics research internship during a recent vacation period, and chose Ms Fraser-McKelvie from a large number of applicants. Dr Pimbblet, lecturer in the School of Physics put the magnitude of the discovery in context by explaining that scientists had been hunting for the Universe’s missing mass for decades.

“It was thought from a theoretical viewpoint that there should be about double the amount of matter in the local Universe compared to what was observed.  It was predicted that the majority of this missing mass should be located in large-scale cosmic structures called filaments - a bit like thick shoelaces,” said Dr Pimbblet.  

Astrophysicists also predicted that the mass would be low in density, but high in temperature - approximately one million degrees Celsius. This meant that, in theory, the matter should have been observable at X-ray wavelengths. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie’s discovery has proved that prediction correct.

Ms Fraser-McKelvie said the ‘Eureka moment’ came when Dr Lazendic-Galloway closely examined the data they had collected.

“Using her expert knowledge in the X-ray astronomy field, Jasmina reanalysed our results to find that we had in fact detected the filaments in our data, where previously we believed we had not.”

X-ray observations provide important information about physical properties of large-scale structures, which can help astrophysicists better understand their true nature. Until now, they had been making deductions based only on numerical models, so the discovery is a huge step forward in determining what amount of mass is actually contained within filaments.

The paper can be found on the Cornell University website.

matthen:

I would call it The Plough, you might know it as The Big Dipper- or even The Celestial Bureaucrat. It’s a particularly helpful constellation for navigation, as it can help us folk in the northern hemisphere find Polaris, the North Star. Everyday it moves in the sky due to the spinning of the Earth, but on much longer time scales it is doing something a lot more amazing. To our very earliest ancestors, it would have looked quite different- as all the stars in our Galaxy are moving- in general spinning around the galactic spiral’s centre. A good reminder that the Universe is really a very dynamic place. [more]

(via physicsphysics)

Free-Floating Planets May be More Common Than Stars

Astronomers, including a NASA-funded team member, have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds were probably ejected from developing planetary systems. 

The discovery is based on a joint Japan-New Zealand survey that scanned the center of the Milky Way galaxy during 2006 and 2007, revealing evidence for up to 10 free-floating planets roughly the mass of Jupiter. The isolated orbs, also known as orphan planets, are difficult to spot, and had gone undetected until now. The newfound planets are located at an average approximate distance of 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth. 

“Although free-floating planets have been predicted, they finally have been detected, holding major implications for planetary formation and evolution models,” said Mario Perez, exoplanet program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 

The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can’t be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. 

“Our survey is like a population census,” said David Bennett, a NASA and National Science Foundation-funded co-author of the study from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. “We sampled a portion of the galaxy, and based on these data, can estimate overall numbers in the galaxy.” 

The study, led by Takahiro Sumi from Osaka University in Japan, appears in the May 19 issue of the journal Nature.

(via NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)