Latest news with #DarkEnergyCamera
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Fighting dragons' light up little-known constellation in the Southern sky: Space photo of the week
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. QUICK FACTS What it is: NGC 6188, also known as the Fighting Dragons of Ara or the Firebird Nebula Where it is: 4,000 light-years away, in the constellation Ara ("the altar") When it was shared: July 9, 2025 From a cat's paw to a cosmic tadpole, humans love to see figures of animals in the night sky — but the "'Fighting Dragons of Ara" has to be one of the most dramatic. Astronomers using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile have unveiled a mesmerizing new image that evokes a mythical duel of two celestial beasts. The striking image appears to show two dragon heads emerging from dense clouds of cosmic dust, seemingly locked in an eternal standoff. Their glowing, sinuous forms are shaped by powerful stellar winds emitted from bright young stars born within the nebula, most of which are only a few million years old. The mesmerizing shapes created by the interplay of radiation and dust are officially known as NGC 6188. It's an emission nebula, which forms when the intense radiation of stars energizes gas, causing it to emit light, according to NASA. It's in the little-known constellation Ara and is observable only from the Southern Hemisphere, where it's found just under the tail of Scorpius, "the scorpion." NGC 6188 is close to the edge of a massive molecular cloud, where stars form. Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images The red in NGC 6188 comes from ionized hydrogen being illuminated by 27 very bright stars, which are barely a few million years old — newborns, on a cosmic scale — giving the image incredible depth. Ultraviolet radiation in the stellar winds coming from these stars have ignited, sculpted and shaped the gas and dust into the dragons' heads. According to NASA, this ultraviolet radiation floods the gas with so much energy that it strips electrons from the hydrogen atoms in the nebula. This is called ionization. As the atoms recombine, they emit energy in the form of photons, which makes the nebula's gas glow. DECam is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the U.S. National Science Foundation's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives. Solve the daily Crossword
Vox
28-06-2025
- Science
- Vox
How the largest digital camera ever made is revolutionizing our view of space
is a senior editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate teams and the Unexplainable and The Gray Area podcasts. He is also the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section and writes the Good News newsletter. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. Ten areas in the sky were selected as 'deep fields' that the Dark Energy Camera imaged several times during the survey, providing a glimpse of distant galaxies and helping determine their 3D distribution in the cosmos. The image is teeming with galaxies — in fact, nearly every single object in this image is a galaxy. Last Thursday, I took my son to the Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York's Museum of Natural History. In the Hayden Planetarium, we watched a simulation of the Milky Way bloom above us, while the actor Pedro Pascal — who truly is everywhere — narrated the galactic dance unfolding on the screen. It was breathtaking. But it didn't compare to what was blasted around the world just a few days later, as the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory began broadcasting its 'first light' — its inaugural images of the cosmos. I found myself pinching-to-zoom through a picture that contains roughly 10 million galaxies in a single frame, a vista so vast it would take 400 4-K TVs to display at full resolution. I could hold the universe itself on my screen. Eye on the sky Perched 8,660 feet up Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes, where the crystal-clear nights provide an exceptionally clear window into space, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory began construction in 2015 with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy. Named for the pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work on galaxy rotation helped prove the existence of dark matter, the observatory was built to run a single, audacious experiment: the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. It will photograph the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every few nights to tackle four grand goals: unmask dark matter and dark energy, inventory the Solar System's asteroids and comets, chart the Milky Way's formation, and capture every transient cosmic event. What makes Rubin so special is its eye, which is a marvel. At its core is a 27-foot-wide dual mirror cast from 51,900 pounds of molten glass that is still light enough to sweep across the sky in seconds. The mirror directs a flow of light from the cosmic depths to the 3.2-gigapixel LSST Camera, a 5-by-10-feet digital jumbotron that is the largest digital camera ever made. It's like a massive magnifying glass paired with the world's sharpest DSLR: Together they capture a swath of the night sky equivalent to 45 full moons every 30 seconds. Related Astronomers spotted something perplexing near the beginning of time And those images, which will be continuously shared with the world, are jaw-dropping. The headlining shot from Rubin's debut, nicknamed 'Cosmic Treasure Chest,' stitches together 1,185 exposures of the Virgo Cluster, our nearest major collection of galaxies, some 55 million light-years away. But the Rubin Observatory is about much more than producing pretty cosmic wallpaper. Its unprecedented scale gives it the ability to search for answers to grand questions about space science. The NSF notes that Rubin will gather more optical data in its first year than all previous ground telescopes combined, turning the messy, ever-changing sky into a searchable movie. Cosmic Treasure Chest. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA It's not just pretty pictures As I've written before, the world has made great strides in planetary defense: Our ability to detect and eventually deflect asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth. Rubin has already begun paying dividends toward that goal. In a mere 10 hours of engineering data, its detection software identified 2,104 brand-new asteroids — including seven near-Earth objects, heavenly bodies whose orbit will bring them near-ish our planet. That haul came from just a thumbnail-sized patch of sky; once Rubin begins its nightly scan of the whole Southern Hemisphere, it's projected to catalog over 5 million asteroids and roughly 100,000 NEOs over the next decade, tripling today's inventory. That will help NASA finally reach its congressionally mandated target of identifying 90 percent of the 25,000 city-killer-class NEOs (those over 140 meters) estimated to be out there. How powerful is Rubin's eye? 'It took 225 years of astronomical observations to detect the first 1.5 million asteroids,' Jake Kurlander, a grad student astronomer at the University of Washington, told 'Rubin will double that number in less than a year.' Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA And the images that Rubin captures will go out to the entire world. Its Skyviewer app will allow anyone to zoom in and out of the corners of space that catch Rubin's eye, including celestial objects so new that most of them don't have names. Looking at the app gives you a sense of what it must have been like to be one of the first human beings, gazing up at a sky filled with wonder and mystery. Finding perspective in a pixel It might seem strange to highlight a telescope at a moment when the world feels as if it is literally on fire. But the Vera Rubin Observatory isn't just a triumph of international scientific engineering, or an unparalleled window on the universe. It is the ultimate perspective provider. If you open the Virgo image and zoom all the way out, Earth's orbit would be smaller than a single pixel. Yet that same pixel is where thousands of engineers, coders, machinists, and scientists quietly spent a decade building an eye that can watch the rest of the universe breathe, and then share those images with all of their fellow humans. Seeing Rubin's images brought to mind the lines of Walt Whitman's 'When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.' I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. On days when life on our little world feels chaotic, Rubin's first-light view offers a valuable reminder: We're just one tiny part in a tapestry of 10 million galaxies, looking up from our planet at the endless stars. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Ominous 'Chamaeleon' is hiding a stellar secret: Space photo of the week
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. QUICK FACTS What it is: The Chamaeleon I star-forming cloud Where it is: 522 light-years away, in the constellations Chamaeleon, Apus, Musca, Carina and Octans When it was shared: June 10, 2025 Stars form within dark molecular clouds of gas and dust called nebulae, but it's rare to capture these stellar nurseries clearly. A dramatic new image from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile unveils the Chamaeleon I dark cloud — the closest such place to the solar system — in unprecedented detail. The dark patches exposed in the new image give Chamaeleon I an ominous look, but within the thick veils of interstellar dust are pockets of light created by newly formed stars. Chamaeleon I is approximately 2 billion years old and is home to around 200 to 300 stars. Those young stars, now emerging from swirling gaseous plumes, are lighting up three nebulae — Cederblad 110 (at the top of the image), the C-shaped Cederblad 111 (center) and the orange Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula (bottom). In astronomy, the word "nebula" is used to describe a diverse range of objects. It was initially used to describe anything fuzzy in the sky that wasn't a star or a planet, and it also refers to planetary nebulae, shells of gas ejected from dying stars. Related: 28 gorgeous nebula photos that capture the beauty of the universe However, these three are reflection nebulae, which glow brightly only because they're illuminated by starlight. That's in contrast to the famous Orion Nebula, which emits its own light because the intense radiation of stars within or near the nebula energizes its gas, according to NASA. MORE SPACE PHOTOS —James Webb telescope takes best look at 'Sombrero Galaxy' in 244 years —Pink 'raindrops' on the sun captured in greatest detail ever —Violent galaxies seen 'jousting' near the dawn of time Chamaeleon I is just one part of the expansive Chamaeleon Cloud Complex — imaged in 2022 by the Hubble Space Telescope — which includes the smaller Chamaeleon II and III clouds. Chamaeleon I has been imaged many times before, most recently by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023. What makes this new image stand out is its spectacular detail. Mounted on the National Science Foundation's Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, DECam's 570-megapixel sensor reveals an intriguing faint red path of nebulosity between Cederblad 110 and Cederblad 111. Formed when streams of gas ejected by young stars collided with slower-moving clouds of gas, they're known as Herbig-Haro objects and are embedded throughout Chamaeleon I. For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Star-forming cloud Chamaeleon I looks like a cosmic masterpiece in new Dark Energy Camera image (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The universe is full of cosmic masterpieces, none more so than this stunningly evocative vista of the Chamaeleon I dark cloud. Chamaeleon I is part of the closest star-forming complex to us, the Chamaeleon Complex, and is depicted here with inky black dabs of interstellar dust mixed with the brushstrokes of bright reflection nebulae illuminated by young stars. Located about 500 light years away, the Chamaeleon Complex is a giant molecular gas cloud, within which stars form when pockets of cool molecular gas, mostly hydrogen, undergo gravitational contraction and condense, thus birthing a star. These molecular clouds are often very dusty, so much so that patches of them become impenetrable to visible light, as we can see in this image of Chamaeleon I, taken by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The brighter regions in the image are reflection nebulae: pockets of dust close to the forming stars, off which the light of those young stars is reflected and scattered. Chamaeleon I is home to three reflection nebulae, in particular Cederblad 111, which is the bright area located in the centre of the image. Above it is the smaller Cederblad 110, notable for its distinct C-shape. Above Cederblad 110 is the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula, which is a window into the star-forming region opened by streams of matter emitted from the poles of a young, low-mass star within. In this image, the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula appears orange-tinted. These outflows are typical of young stars found within star-forming regions such as Chamaeleon I. After a molecular cloud has fragmented and collapsed to form a young star, that star can then grow further by its gravity pulling in streams of gas from the cloud that surrounds it. Sometimes, though, the young star is fed a little too well, and it can't encompass all the mass that falls onto it. Some excess material is therefore spat away, channelled by the star's nascent magnetic field into beams of matter that spurt from the young star's magnetic poles. It's one of these beams that has dug a tunnel through the molecular gas to form the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula. Other jets from other young stars can also be seen plowing into the gas of Chamaeleon I, causing that gas to glow as what astronomers refer to as Herbig–Haro objects. Examples can be seen as small red patches all across this view of Chamaeleon I. The most recent census of Chamaeleon I, by Penn State University astronomer Kevin Luhman in 2017, found about 50 new stars and brown dwarfs, bringing the total population of Chamaeleon I up to 226 members. These stars are split into two clusters, north and south, within Chamaeleon I, and based on the ages of their stars, these clusters began active star formation 5 to 6 million and 3 to 4 million years ago, respectively. That star formation continues today, but at a declining rate. Those stars are mostly small, low-mass red dwarf stars. Luhman's studies concluded that the Chamaeleon's initial mass function, which describes the initial masses at which stars form when they condense out of a molecular cloud, is only 0.1 to 0.15 solar masses. Such low-mass stars are at the bottom end of the red dwarf mass scale, yet such stars are the most common stars in the universe, so it is no surprise to see them so dominant in Chamaeleon I. It takes a far more intense star-forming region to produce higher-mass stars. It's possible to understand Chamaeleon I's properties a little better by understanding its location. Our Sun and solar system are currently passing through a region of space called the Local Bubble. This is an area of space where gas in the interstellar medium is relatively sparse, with an overall low density. This region was evacuated within the past 20 million years by numerous supernovae explosions, the shockwaves of which blew away much of the molecular gas in their vicinity, creating a bubble in the interstellar medium with a lower density than its surroundings. Related Stories: — Hubble Telescope spies star-forming cocoons in neighboring galaxy (photo) — Hubble Telescope spies newborn stars in famous Orion Nebula (photo) — Astronomers spot unusually synchronized star formation in ancient galaxy for 1st time The Chamaeleon Complex sits on the surface of this bubble, where the supernova shockwaves have buffeted its denser gas and prompted it to eventually begin forming stars. There's also the Chamaeleon II and III dark clouds, but these currently show little active star birth and no active star formation, respectively. They therefore remain dark and inert. It seems all the artistry is to be found in Chamaeleon I.
Economic Times
15-06-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
Pluto-like planet discovered: How big is it and how far is it from Earth?
Researchers believe that 2017 OF201's highly eccentric orbit points to a chaotic origin, possibly caused by a gravitational push from one of the solar system's gas giants in its early days, sending the object as far as the distant Oort Cloud. Pluto-like planet discovered: How big is it and how far is it from Earth? Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Pluto Like Planet With an Extraordinary Orbit A Decade's Largest Solar System Discovery Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Possibly Ejected from the Oort Cloud Solar System May Host Hundreds More A Renewed Push for Outer Solar System Exploration FAQs What is 2017 OF201? Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The object is estimated to be around 700 kilometers (435 miles) in diameter, which is approximately half the size of Pluto. In a significant breakthrough, astronomers have detected a Pluto-like planet situated far beyond the known boundaries of the solar system. Identified as 2017 OF201 , the icy celestial body may represent the largest object discovered in the outer solar system in over a decade, reigniting interest in the unexplored expanses beyond as an extreme trans-Neptunian object (TNO), 2017 OF201 is believed to be around 700 kilometers (435 miles) in diameter—about half the size of Pluto. Though smaller than the famous dwarf planet, its location and orbital characteristics have startled researchers. The object's aphelion, or farthest distance from the Sun, is more than 1,600 times Earth's orbital distance, while its perihelion, the nearest point to the Sun, is roughly 44.5 times that of Earth—comparable to Pluto's orbital reach.'This suggests a highly elliptical and unusual orbit,' noted Dr. Sihao Cheng from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, which led the discovery, as mentioned in a report by planet takes approximately 25,000 years to complete one revolution around the Sun, hinting at a dramatic cosmic using a combination of data from the Dark Energy Camera in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the celestial body was captured over seven years and 19 different exposures. Astronomers suggest that if the object's size is verified via radio telescopes, it will earn the title of the largest newly discovered planetary body in the outer solar system since the early 2010s.2017 OF201 joins a short but significant list of massive TNOs, which includes Eris, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Gonggong. It further challenges previous assumptions about the sparsity of large bodies in the far-flung regions of the solar to the researchers, the extreme orbit of 2017 OF201 suggests a tumultuous past. It may have been gravitationally ejected by one of the gas giants early in solar system history, potentially reaching the Oort Cloud—a distant shell believed to host countless icy bodies—before being pulled back inward.'This is a classic case of a planetary body that didn't just form where it now resides. Its path tells the story of encounters, ejections, and returns,' said Dr. Yifan Yang, a collaborator on the study, as mentioned in a report by Kuiper Belt , the donut-shaped region beyond Neptune, was once thought to be relatively empty. However, the discovery of 2017 OF201 raises fresh questions about what lies beyond.'The fact that 2017 OF201 was detectable while spending just 1% of its orbital period near the inner solar system implies that there could be hundreds of similar-sized objects we simply haven't detected yet,' Dr. Cheng discovery provides renewed impetus for studying the Pluto-like planet category and the solar system's unexplored boundaries. It may also guide future missions akin to NASA's New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015 before entering deeper Kuiper Belt emphasize that while humanity has explored deep space with cutting-edge instruments, the very edges of our own cosmic neighborhood remain largely uncharted territory.2017 OF201 is an icy, Pluto-like celestial body classified as an extreme trans-Neptunian object (TNO). It was recently discovered in the far outer regions of the solar system and could be the largest such object found in over a decade.
