Latest news with #EdwinHubble
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
See our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a whole new light
A new composite image of the Andromeda Galaxy is offering an unprecedented view of our closest spiral galactic neighbor. Composed by NASA and international space partners, the image combines data from more than a dozen telescopes and ground-based observatories. Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, Andromeda, which is also known as Messier 31m has been a focus of the space community for more than a century, with early observations dating back to at least 1923 by astronomer Edwin Hubble. A key focus of ongoing studies has been the galaxy's evolution and structure, which shares many similar features with our own Milky Way. The new imagery weaves together data from X-rays captured by Nasa's Chandra telescope, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft and several other missions to create a unique view of the galaxy's features. See The Objects Humans Left Behind On The Moon "Each type of light reveals new information about this close galactic relative to the Milky Way. For example, Chandra's X-rays reveal the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of M31 as well as many other smaller compact and dense objects strewn across the galaxy," NASA stated. Unlike the Milky Way, which is difficult to observe from within due to dust, gas and Earth's position inside it, Andromeda can be studied from a great distance, offering astronomers a more complete and unobstructed view. Despite the insights revealed by this image, many mysteries remain about the spiral galaxy, including the composition of invisible dark matter, how it interacts with other cosmic structures and how many stars and planets it truly contains. Andromeda is believed to contain hundreds of billions of stars, leading scientists to theorize that it could also host trillions of planets. Even with an army of advanced space technology available today, no telescope is powerful enough to overcome the vast distance and identify a single planet, or, for that matter, even a star, in detail within Andromeda. Astronomers Discover Largest Superstructure In Cosmos NASA says its upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is among several missions that will help continue to shed light on galaxies like M31. Named after the agency's first chief astronomer, the high-tech observatory is expected to launch in 2027 and will feature a field of view 100 times larger than that of the Hubble Space article source: See our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a whole new light
New York Post
4 days ago
- Science
- New York Post
Unprecedented view of our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy revealed
A new composite image of the Andromeda Galaxy is offering an unprecedented view of our closest spiral galactic neighbor. Composed by NASA and international space partners, the image combines data from more than a dozen telescopes and ground-based observatories. Advertisement Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, Andromeda, which is also known as Messier 31m has been a focus of the space community for more than a century, with early observations dating back to at least 1923 by astronomer Edwin Hubble. A key focus of ongoing studies has been the galaxy's evolution and structure, which shares many similar features with our own Milky Way. The new imagery weaves together data from X-rays captured by NASA's Chandra telescope, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft and several other missions to create a unique view of the galaxy's features. 'Each type of light reveals new information about this close galactic relative to the Milky Way. For example, Chandra's X-rays reveal the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of M31 as well as many other smaller compact and dense objects strewn across the galaxy,' NASA stated. Advertisement 3 The Andromeda galaxy is located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. FOX Weather 3 On a clear night, some stars of the galaxy can be seen from Earth. FOX Weather Unlike the Milky Way, which is difficult to observe from within due to dust, gas and Earth's position inside it, Andromeda can be studied from a great distance, offering astronomers a more complete and unobstructed view. Despite the insights revealed by this image, many mysteries remain about the spiral galaxy, including the composition of invisible dark matter, how it interacts with other cosmic structures and how many stars and planets it truly contains. Advertisement Andromeda is believed to contain hundreds of billions of stars, leading scientists to theorize that it could also host trillions of planets. 3 A key focus of ongoing studies has been the galaxy's evolution and structure, which shares many similar features with our own Milky Way. FOX Weather Even with an army of advanced space technology available today, no telescope is powerful enough to overcome the vast distance and identify a single planet, or, for that matter, even a star, in detail within Andromeda. Advertisement NASA says its upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is among several missions that will help continue to shed light on galaxies like M31. Named after the agency's first chief astronomer, the high-tech observatory is expected to launch in 2027 and will feature a field of view 100 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Times
26-06-2025
- Science
- Times
Telescope reminds us of the debt we owe Vera Rubin
Vera C Rubin's work did much to demystify the heavens NSF-DOE VERA C RUBIN OBSERVATORY/AP T he American astronomer Vera C Rubin, who died in 2016, was certainly given enormous recognition and credit for her work in her lifetime. Her stellar career led to medals, prizes and awards all over the world. She did not, however, receive the Nobel prize for physics for her pioneering study of galaxy rotation rates in the 1960s and 1970s, work subsequently accepted as strong evidence for the existence of dark matter. Dark matter and dark energy are now thought to comprise 95 per cent of the mass-energy content of the universe. Rubin had to battle prejudice against women in science for many decades. If she did miss out on a Nobel because of her gender, she would not be alone. The shabby failure to fully credit Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the double helix breakthrough is well known. Lisa Meitner, 'the mother of the atomic bomb', was even more ruthlessly snubbed, while her partner in nuclear fission research, Otto Hahn, bagged a Nobel. The brilliance of Marietta Blau, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Chien-Shiung Wu was also overlooked by Stockholm, while many of their male collaborators were laureated. In Rubin's own field, the great Edwin Hubble, whose work drew on that of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, acknowledged the huge debt he owed her. Just as Hubble gave his name to a revolutionary telescope, so too did Rubin, when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile was renamed the Vera C Rubin Observatory in her honour. The first images from this huge yet agile device were published this week, capturing 2,000 undetected asteroids within ten hours. Over the next decade, the southern night sky will be continuously mapped and supernova explosions from billions of years ago will be traced. If our solar system does have a mysterious Planet Nine, Rubin will find it. Perhaps somewhere in those heavens she did so much to demystify, Vera Rubin is having the last laugh.
Forbes
02-06-2025
- General
- Forbes
Our Milky Way May Not Collide With Andromeda After All, Scientists Say
Andromeda Galaxy : Milky Way Galaxy : ... More Stars : When will the Milky Way collide with the Andromeda Galaxy? It's a common question because, for many years, astronomers have theorized that the two largest spiral galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood — our Milky Way and Andromeda (also called M31) will one day collide. An answer is normally offered: about four billion years. Now, this decade-long belief is being challenged by new research that suggests the Milky Way and Andromeda may not be on a collision course after all. The study, published today in Nature Astronomy, reveals a 50% probability that the two galaxies will avoid crashing into each other within the next 10 billion years. Andromeda is 2.5 million light years from the Milky Way. Cmosmically speaking, that's very close. It's home to at least a trillion stars. The Milky Way, meanwhile, hosts about 100-400 billion stars (it's hard to say because we're in it, so our telescopes can't see all of it). The knowledge that Andromeda is moving toward the Milky Way is core to our understanding of an expanding universe. Having four years previously figured out that Andromeda — a fuzzy blob to the naked eye in dark skies — was an "island universe" (in other words, a galaxy), American astronomer Edwin Hubble calculated in 1929 that galaxies were moving away from the Milky Way, All of them, that is, except one — Andromeda. The universe was expanding, as Albert Einstein had predicted. However, Andromeda and the Milky Way are headed towards each other at 250,000 miles per hour. Three future scenarios for Milky Way & Andromeda encounter. Top left: Galaxies bypass at 1 million ... More light-year separation. Top right: At 500,000 light-years, dark matter provides friction that brings galaxies to a close encounter. Bottom: A 100,000 light-year separation leads to a collision. Andromeda will dominate Earth's night sky in about four billion light-years, goes the received wisdom. It will collide with the Milky Way in about five billion years, forming a new, larger galaxy — 'Milkomeda.' New research debunks this. Based on gravitational models that consider the influence of other celestial bodies in the Local Group of galaxies — specifically a number of dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way — researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland calculate that the Milky Way's path through the cosmos has a high chance of missing Andromeda altogether. The research uses the latest data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, along with revised mass estimates of surrounding galaxies. The Milky Way is not alone. It exists with over 50 other galaxies called the Local Group, which also includes Andromeda. In orbit around the Milky Way are a number of dwarf galaxies, including the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds and the Triangulum galaxy (M33) — the latter half the size of our Milky Way and the third-largest galaxy in our local group of galaxies, according to NASA. Those small galaxies affect the Milky Way's path through space, according to the researchers, whose new data on the mass of those galaxies produces a new result. In particular, the gravitational pull of the LMC, whose mass was not considered in previous analyses, may explain it. As an aside, this paper also states that the LMC may merge with the Milky Way within the next two billion years. The Andromeda Galaxy. (Photo by: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Given that the movement of Andromeda is the basis for our understanding of the entire universe, there's been a lot of research into its movements. In 2019, researchers reported that Andromeda had already consumed several smaller galaxies within the last few billion years. In 2023, another paper argued that the Milky Way and Andromeda are, in effect, already interacting since ancient stars in the Milky Way's halo are about halfway to Andromeda and that a halo of gas around both galaxies is already entwined. Whether or not Andromeda collides with the Milky Way or not in four billion years is, for Earthlings, somewhat academic. By that time, the sun will have used up its hydrogen fuel and be expanding into a red giant star, boiling away Earth's oceans as it does so and possibly even consuming the entire planet. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Spot a Strangely Perfect Sphere Thousands of Light-Years Away
Here's what you'll learn in this story. Scientists using radio wavelength data from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) spotted a strangely symmetrical sphere located thousands of light-years away. The 'sphere' is likely the result of a Type 1a supernova shockwave, though astronomers aren't sure exactly how far away the this supernova remnant is from Earth—either 7,175 light-years or 25,114 light-years. Regardless of this distance discrepancy, the near-perfect spherical nature of the remnant gives scientists the opportunity to learn more about one of the most energetic events in the universe. The amount humanity has learned about the cosmos in just the past century is truly staggering. A little over a century ago, American astronomer Edwin Hubble announced to the world that the Milky Way was actually just one galaxy among many in the known universe. Now, we know the universe contains hundreds of billions—if not trillions—of galaxies, and engineers have developed space-based telescopes capable of spying some of the oldest ones in existence. Of course, that doesn't mean mysteries don't remain—both large and small. On the big side of the equation, dark matter and dark energy remain perplexing conundrums, but science's array of detectors often posit smaller puzzles. One such mystery is the curious case of supernova remnant (SNR) G305.4–2.2, nicknamed Teleios. A Greek word meaning 'perfect,' Telelios references the near-perfect symmetry of what appears to be a sphere of ejected star material—aka a supernova remnant. Initially captured by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), Teleios's origin isn't the real head-scratcher. Instead, scientists like Miroslav Filipović, an astrophysicist from Western Sydney University in Australia, are more perplexed by its near-perfect shape, an extreme rarity for such an SNR throughout the universe. 'The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time,' Filipovic, along with a cadre of other Australian astrophysicists, wrote in an article on The Conversation in March. 'If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we'll see a squashed shape. So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find.' In an analysis submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia and published on the preprint server arXiv, Filipović—the lead author of the study—and his team discovered that Teleios only glows faintly in radio wavelengths. Armed with this information, the astronomers could reasonably deduce that Telelios originated from a Type 1a supernova, which typically form from binary star systems where one of the stars is a white dwarf. Because these types of supernovae are consistent in their peak brightness, astronomers have used them for decades to measure cosmic distances (with none other than the Hubble telescope among others). However, in this instance, astronomers haven't been able to quite nail down Teleios's exact distance, but they've drawn up three best guesses. If it is the results of a Type 1a supernova, then its likely that this symmetrical mystery is either 7,175 light-years or 25,114 light-years away, making the sphere either 46 light-years across or 157 light-years across, respectively. This distance also reflects its age, meaning it's either less than 1,000 years old or greater than 10,000 years old. So, lots of room for further exploration. The study also posits the idea that it could be a Type 1ax supernova where the supernova instead leaves behind a 'zombie star' remnant, according to Live Science. However, in this scenario, the supernova would be only 3,262 light-years away and around 11 light-years across. Whatever the scenario, Teleios—which is just one of the many interesting things discovered by ASKAP—still presents a remarkable opportunity to learn more about supernovae. 'This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe,' Filipovic co-authors in The Conversation. In 100 years from now, who knows what the universe might look like to our 22nd-century enlightened minds. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
