Black Holes Turn Up the Heat for the Universe

Astrophysicists have just discovered a new heating source in cosmological structure formation. Until now, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes could only influence their immediate surroundings. A collaboration of scientists at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and in Canada and the US have now discovered that diffuse gas in the universe can absorb luminous gamma-ray emission from black holes, heating it up strongly. This surprising result has important implications for the formation of structures in the universe.

In this graphic:

A supermassive black hole is surrounded by a dust ring (torus). The collapse of gas onto the black hole launches an energetic jet of matter and radiation, which is transported over cosmological distances. A jet that is pointing into our direction is called a “blazar.” (Credit: ESA/NASA, the AVO project and Paolo Padovani)

Read more here.

Organics Probably Formed Easily in Early Solar System.  NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope observed a fledgling solar system like the one depicted in this artist’s concept. New computer simulations at the University of Chicago show that turbulence lofts dust particles above the illuminated portion of the cloud, where they become exposed to high levels of ultraviolet light from nearby stars. UV irradiation was a key component in the production of complex organic molecules in the early solar system. Read more here. (Credit: Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

cwnl:

NGC 1977 The Running Man Nebula

by Francione Fabrizio

cwnl:

Sharpless 2-157 Emission Nebula in Cepheus (Hubble Palette)

Copyright: Keith Egger

crownedrose:

scinerds:

scienceisbeauty:

The Rosette Nebula

Source: Telescopes and Optics (astronomy notes from Paul Eskridge), Minnesota State University Mankato.

I’m sure that after a point people will start to feel that shiny nebula/mineral/galaxy photos are being over-posted but, until then, shiny nebula photo!

One can never have too much astrophotography.

M27: The Dumbbell Nebula

The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier’s list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the type of nebula our Sun will produce when nuclear fusion stops in its core.

Image Credit & Copyright: Bill Snyder (Bill Snyder Photography)

unknownskywalker:

Hubble serves up a holiday snow angel

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope presents a festive holiday greeting that’s out of this world. The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium.

Sharpless 2-106 lies nearly 2,000 light-years from us. The nebula measures several light-years in length. It appears in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. Twin lobes of super-hot gas — glowing blue in this image — stretch outward from the massive, young star IRS 4, creating the “wings” of our angel.

A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape, with ripples and ridges in the gas interacting with the cooler interstellar medium. Dusky red veins surround the blue emission from the nebula. The faint light emanating from the central star reflects off of tiny dust particles. This illuminates the environment around the star, showing darker filaments of dust winding beneath the blue lobes.

Infrared observations of the nebula have also uncovered more than 600 brown dwarfs with weighs less than a tenth of our Sun. Because of their low mass, they cannot produce sustained energy through nuclear fusion like our Sun does. They encompass the nebula in a small cluster.

Watch video: Three-dimensional view of Sharpless 2-106

NGC 604 in Galaxy M33. [High Res]

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a vast nebula called NGC 604, which lies in the neighboring spiral galaxy M33, located 2.7 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum.

unknownskywalker:

Flocculent spiral NGC 2841

Star formation is one of the most important processes in shaping the Universe; it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear. Yet there is still much that astronomers don’t understand, such as how do the properties of stellar nurseries vary according to the composition and density of the gas present, and what triggers star formation in the first place?

The driving force behind star formation is particularly unclear for a type of galaxy called a flocculent spiral, such as NGC 2841 shown here, which features short spiral arms rather than prominent and well-defined galactic limbs, and a relatively low star formation rate compared to other spirals

In an attempt to answer some of these questions, astronomers are using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a sample of nearby, but wildly differing, locations where stars are forming. The observational targets include both star clusters and galaxies, and star formation rates range from the baby-booming starburst galaxy Messier 82 to the much more sedate star producer NGC 2841.

While the image shows lots of hot, young stars in the disc of NGC 2841, there are just a few sites of current star formation where hydrogen gas is collapsing into new stars. It is likely that these fiery youngsters destroyed the star-forming regions in which they were formed.