SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Crater 2 - Humongous Galaxy Orbiting Our Own JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE?!

Milky Way. ESO / Serge Brunier, Frederic Tapissier via NASA

April 25, 2016 - SPACE - Researchers scanning the skies just got a big surprise. They spotted a humongous galaxy orbiting our own, where none had been seen before. It appeared, seemingly, out of nowhere.

So, just how did the newly-discovered Crater 2 manage to pull off this feat, like a deer leaping from the interstellar bushes to stare us down through our collective headlights?

Although the appearance may seem sudden, the fact is that Crater 2 has been there all along. We just missed it.

Now that we know it’s there, though, there are a few other humiliating details that astronomers discovered.

First of all, we can’t blame the galaxy’s size for its relative obscurity. Crater 2 is so enormous that researchers have already pegged it as the fourth largest galaxy orbiting our own.

We can’t blame its distance, either. Crater 2's orbit around the Milky Way puts it right in our neighborhood.

That said, how did we still not know it was there? A new paper out in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society from researchers at the University of Cambridge has an answer for us. It turns out that, despite being large and close, Crater 2 is also a pretty dark galaxy.

In fact, it’s one of the dimmest galaxies ever spotted in the universe. That, along with some much brighter neighbors, let the galaxy that researchers have nicknamed “the feeble giant” escape detection until now.

Now that we have seen Crater 2, however, the discovery raises questions about what else is out there.

Researchers are already talking about mounting a search for similarly large, dark galaxies around us. It’s a good reminder that there’s still so much about space that we don’t know.
- Gizmodo.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Run, Star, Run - Fastest Star Known Breaks Free From Our Galaxy's Bonds; Scientists Baffled; "Common Explanations For Other Previous Hypervelocity Stars Do Not Apply"?! [VIDEO]

An artist impression of the mass-transfer phase followed by a double-detonation supernova that leads to the ejection of US 708.
(ESA / Hubble, NASA, S. Geier)

March 9, 2015 - SPACE - A hypervelocity star traveling at a speed of 1,200 kilometers per second is heading away from the Milky Way galaxy, boosted by its sibling star’s death as a massive supernova.

The star, known as US 708, was first discovered in 2005 and is supposed to be the remnant of a red giant. Now, scientists at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, have measured its full 3D speed, relative to the center of the galaxy, with the help of the data of the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii – and it turns out to be breathtaking: 1,200 kilometers a second or 2.7 million miles per hour, W. M. Keck Observatory reported on Thursday.

“At that speed, you could travel from Earth to the moon in five minutes,” one astronomer at the University of Hawaii Eugene Magnier said in a press-release.

The scientists also found out that the star was spinning quickly, at over 100 kilometers per second, which means that in the past it has received an energetic boost. What is also odd about the star is that it has lost its hydrogen, so common explanations suitable for any other previously discovered hypervelocity stars, do not apply.

Hypervelocity stars are those traveling fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of its galaxy.

Usually, the stars that are going fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of our galaxy resemble the sun and are slower than US 708. They are thought to have once had pairs. However, when one star is sucked in by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the other one gets released from the grip of the whole galaxy.


WATCH: Double-detonation supernova leads to the ejection of US 708 from the galaxy.

However, astronomers believe that US 708 was in a very close relationship with another star – so close, in fact, that even a black hole couldn't tear them apart. The current theory suggests that the star’s pair was a white dwarf that might have stolen all its hydrogen, passed on to the partner’s helium core – until the fatal destabilization that caused ignition, turning it into a massive supernova.

“The only way to get rid of the companion is a thermonuclear supernova,” Stephan Geier of the European Southern Observatory said, adding that the star was propelled by the breaking of the pair – but not by the explosion. “It’s not a shockwave, it's the mere fact that this star is unleashed from this very tight binary.”

Now, astronomers, who have published their findings in the Friday issue of journal Science, hope to find more stars like US 708 to study supernovas of this type. They are called “standard candles”, and help measure distances in the universe.

“If we can really prove this scenario, then we have a means to study those explosions in a new and very interesting way,” said Geier. - RT.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Massive Explosion At Edge Of The Universe - Hard Evidence Of A Black Hole Forming!

May 10, 2014 - SPACE -  On 24 October 2012 observatories across the world were alerted about a huge stellar explosion, the GRB121024A, which had been located just hours before in the Eridanus constellation by NASA's Swift satellite. However, only the European Southern Observatory using its Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in the Atacama desert in Chile managed to take accurate polarimetric measurements of the phenomenon. The data obtained on that explosion, which took place about 11,000 million years ago, have made it possible to reconstruct how a black hole is formed.

There is no other event in the cosmos that can compete in terms of energy and intensity with stellar explosions on the outer reaches of the universe and which are known as LGRBs (Long Gamma-Ray Bursts): in just one second a single GRB can emit as many as hundreds of stars like the Sun during its 10,000-million-year-lifetime.

For the last decade astrophysicists have been in possession of strong evidence that LGRBs occur when the so-called massive stars burst; these are huge stars with masses of up to hundreds of times bigger than that of the Sun and which, moreover, spin rapidly on a rotation axis.

As these stars are massive and spin, they do not explode like a normal star, which does so radially, as a ball does when it deflates, for example. The implosion of these huge stars would produce, according to theoretical models, a huge spinning top, which would turn in the way that water rotates down the plughole of a basin, until a black hole is finally formed. The energy given off by this gigantic explosion would be emitted in two jets displaying a high level of energy and which would be aligned with the rotation axis of the dying star.

What is more, all these stars have magnetic fields. And these are intensified further if they rotate rapidly, as in the case of the LGRBs. So during the internal collapse of the star towards the central black hole, the magnetic fields of the star would also swirl around the star's rotation axis. And during the collapse of the star, a powerful "magnetic geyser" would be produced and be ejected from the environment of the black hole that is being formed; the effects of this can be felt at distances of billions of kilometres.

This complex scenario led one to predict that the light emitted during the explosion of the star must have been circularly polarized as if it were a screw. And that is what, for the first time, the authors have detected in Chile: a circularly polarized light that is the direct consequence of a black hole "recently" created on the outer reaches of the Universe and which has been confirmed by the theoretical model. What is more, an optical circular polarization to such a high degree had never been detected, and nor had one been detected in such a distant source. All this indicates that the GRB121024A is an extraordinary event.

The VLT is one of the largest and best equipped telescopes in the world; it makes use of the exceptional astronomical observation conditions of the Atacama desert. That is why the use of the VLT is very limited and is regulated by a highly competitive process in which every six months an international committee selects the best proposals for observation submitted. So the only way to access these technologically state-of-the-art facilities is by means of powerful international consortia. 27 institutions belonging to 13 countries have participated in the study published by the prestigious journal Nature. - Daily Galaxy.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Interplanetary Dust Disk - Rare "Zodiacal Light" Will Be Visible In The Night Sky Soon!

March 08, 2013 - SPACE - The solar system's small bodies have been often in the news lately. There are currently two bright comets in the southern sky, one of which, Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) will soon be moving into the northern sky. An asteroid named 2012 DA14 recently passed close to the Earth. There have been two bright meteors in the past month, one in Russia and one in California.

But these types of bodies aren't the smallest relics of the solar system visible from here on Earth. A rare and hard to spot phenomenon called the Zodiacal Light, made from tiny solar system dust particles, can only be sighted under the best conditions. And a good time to view it is coming up soon.

Photo: European Southern Observatory/Flickr.

Comets and asteroids

Comets and asteroids are fairly similar, mainly differing in their composition and orbits. Comets are made of ice and dust; asteroids of rock. Comets have tails because their ice is melted by the sun and is swept away by the solar wind. Asteroid orbits are mostly circular; some comet orbits are circular, but many are highly elliptical or parabolic.

Although asteroids and comets are much smaller than planets, they are larger than meteoroids, the objects that cause meteors when they encounter the Earth's atmosphere.

Most meteoroids are quite small, smaller than a pea. But there are smaller objects still, so small that they cannot be seen as individual objects. This material is called interplanetary dust, and is spread throughout the solar system, but more concentrated close to the plane of the planets, which astronomers call the ecliptic because eclipses occur in this plane.

Interplanetary dust

Most stargazers are unaware that they can actually see this interplanetary dust, when conditions are right.

In some ways this disk of interplanetary dust is similar in appearance to the Milky Way. The glow of the Milky Way is the result of the combined light of millions of stars too faint to be resolved by the unaided eye.

The interplanetary dust disk, called the Zodiacal Light, is the result of millions of dust particles too faint to be resolved. Unlike the Milky Way, which can be resolved with a telescope, the particles that make up the Zodiacal Light are too small to be resolved by any optical instrument. [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy]

So you can forget about using a telescope to see the Zodiacal Light. It can only be seen with the unaided eye, and can only be photographed with a sensitive wide-angle lens.

When to look?

There are only a few windows of opportunity during the year to see the Zodiacal Light, and one of these is coming up over the next couple of weeks.

One factor is that the moon will move out of the evening sky, leaving it darker and making fainter objects more easy to spot. A second factor is that the ecliptic, where the Zodiacal Light is brightest, will be perpendicular to the horizon in the early evening in the northern hemisphere.

Wait until the sky is completely free of scattered light from the sun, at least an hour and a half after sunset.

Where to look?

First of all, choose an observing location with a very dark sky. It must be dark enough that the Milky Way is easily visible, because the Zodiacal Light is fainter than the Milky Way.

At this time of year in the northern hemisphere, the Milky Way is setting in the northwest in the early evening, marked by Cassiopeia and Cygnus. The ecliptic, marked with a green line in the chart, is due west, passing through the faint constellation of Pisces.

In a dark sky, you will see the Zodiacal Light and the Milky Way as two distinct but very faint objects. The Milky Way gets wider and brighter higher in the sky, while the Zodiacal Light gets narrower and fainter. The first is a band, the second a cone.

If you succeed in spotting the Zodiacal Light over the next few weeks, you will have observed one of the rarest phenomena in the night sky. - MNN.

MONUMENTAL DISCOVERY: "Holy Grail" of Exo-Planet Research - Astronomers Find New Planet, Gliese 667Cc, Capable of Supporting Life!

The planet lies in what they describe as a 'habitable zone', neither too near its sun to dry out or too far away which freezes it.  And the discovery could help answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, which has been plagued astronomers and alien fanatics for years.

Astronomers have found a new planet they believe can sustain life. Located approximately 22 light
years away from Earth, Gliese 667Cc was found to be in the middle of a “Goldilocks zone,” an area
that is no too close to a sun or too far away where life can freeze.

Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.  Red dwarf stars are the most common stars in the neighbourhood of the sun, usually hosting planets called gas giants, which are not composed of rock matter.  Re-analysing data from the European Southern Observatory, the astronomers found Gliese 667Cc is a solid planet with roughly four and a half times the mass of Earth.  The University Göttingen and University of California scientists have calculated the planet recieves ten per cent less light from its red dwarf star than the Earth gets from the Sun.  As the light is in the infrared area, the planet still receives nearly the same amount of energy as the Earth, meaning water could be liquid and surface temperatures could be similar to ours.  Astronomers are hailing the plant as the 'Holy Grail' of discoveries, as 20 years ago scientists were still arguing about the existence of planets beyond our solar system.

New 'life in space' hope after billions of 'habitable planets' found in Milky Way.

Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet in 1995, astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 760 planets beyond the solar system, with only four believed to be in a habitable zone.  One of the most successful tools of planet hunters is the High Accuracy Radial Planetary Searcher (HARPS) telescope, which measures the radial velocity of a star.  Scientists using this telescope analyse the small wobbles in a stars motion caused by the gravitational response of a planet, determining the position and size of a planet indirectly.  Currently, they can detect planets which are 3-5 times the mass of the Earth but, in the future, they could detect planets which are smaller than twice the mass of Earth.  Steven Vogt, an astronomer from the University of California, said: "It´s the Holy Grail of exo-planet research to find a planet orbiting around a star at the right distance so it´s not too close where it would lose all its water and not too far where it would freeze.  "It´s right there in the habitable zone - there´s no question or discussion about it. It is not on the edge. It is right in there."  Guillem Anglada-Escudé, of University Göttingen, Germany, said: "With the advent of new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds." - Telegraph.

EXOPLANETARY DISCLOSURE: Our Sun's Twin Has a Nine-Planet Solar System - And it's Just 127 Light Years Away!

A star already known to host five alien planets may actually be home to a whopping nine full-fledged worlds - a planetary arrangement that, if confirmed, would outnumber our own solar system and set a new record for the most populated system of extrasolar planets yet found.

This artist's impression shows the remarkable planetary system around the sun-like star HD 10180.

The sun-like star, called HD 10180, is located approximately 127 light-years away from Earth. In a previous study that was published in August 2010, astronomers identified five confirmed alien worlds and two planetary candidates. Now a new study confirms both previous candidates in the HD 10180 system, and also suggests that two more planets could be orbiting the star. This could bring the tally up to nine planets, said lead author Mikko Tuomi, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. Our solar system, by comparison, has eight official planets (with Mercury closest to the sun and Neptune at the farthest end). Pluto and several other smaller objects are considered dwarf planets, not full-blown worlds. "The data indicates that there are not only seven but likely as many as nine planets in the system," Tuomi told SPACE.com in an email interview. "The two new planets appear to have orbital periods of roughly 10 and 68 days and masses of 1.9 and 5.1 times that of Earth, which enables the classification of them as hot super-Earths, i.e. planets with likely scorchingly hot rocky surfaces." Tuomi re-analyzed observations collected between November 2003 and June 2010 by the planet-hunting HARPS spectrograph instrument, which is mounted on a 3.6-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile.

Since the newly detected candidates are still unconfirmed, more research is needed to determine if they are bona fide planets, and not erroneous signals. "While the existence of the larger of these two is well supported by the data, the signal corresponding to the smaller one exceeds the detection threshold only barely, which gives it a very small but non-eligible probability of being a false positive," Tuomi said. Since the planets in the HD 10180 system are too distant to be directly observed, astronomers use HARPS to monitor the gravitational pulls that the planets exert on their host star. The five previously confirmed planets are relatively large and orbit the parent star at intervals that range from just six days to 600 days. The two newly confirmed planets are also super-Earths, with one that orbits tightly around HD 10180, while the other has an orbit that swings beyond the others. Observations of the masses of the new planetary candidates and their distances from the star indicate that they likely have orbital periods of approximately 10 and 68 days. They are likely both rocky planets with surfaces hotter than that of Mercury, Tuomi added. But even if they are confirmed as actual planets, neither are located in a circumstellar region known as the habitable zone, where conditions could be suitable for liquid water to exist on a planet's surface.

"They are certainly not in the habitable zone and likely have no prospects for hosting life," Tuomi said. "However, one of the Neptune-sized planets in the system with an orbital period of 600 days is actually in the middle of the habitable zone, which makes it an interesting target when the better detection methods enable us to observe moons orbiting exoplanets in the future." As instruments and observatories become more sophisticated, and as astronomers hone planet-hunting techniques, densely populated systems similar to HD 10180 and our own solar system could be discovered in greater numbers. "This certainly tells our methods are sufficient for detecting richly populated planetary systems," Tuomi said. "Just how common they are, we do not know based on only two examples. My guess would be that they are very common, though, because they are very hard to detect and we already have one when the precision of our instruments enables the detection of these systems only barely." The finding also suggests that similar planetary systems could be more common throughout the universe than was previously thought. "Scientifically this would not be of much significance because it has been suspected for a long time that such populous planetary systems exist in the universe," Tuomi said. "Philosophically, though, it shows that our very own solar system is not special in this respect either — systems with great numbers of planets are very likely common throughout the universe and it is only a matter of time when we find even richer systems." The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. - FOX News.

EXOPLANETARY DISCLOSURE: Nine Exoplanets Discovered in Solar System's 'Twin'!

In 2010, a star 127 light-years away stunned the world -- it had become the largest star system beyond our own, playing host to five, possibly seven, alien worlds. Now, the star (called HD 10180) is back in the headlines; it may actually have nine exoplanets orbiting it.

Interestingly, HD 10180 is a yellow dwarf star very much like the sun, so this discovery has drawn many parallels with our own Solar System. It is a multi-planetary system surrounding a sun-like star. But it is also a very alien place with an assortment of worlds spread over wildly different orbits. It is believed that one of HD 10180's exoplanets is small -- although astronomers only know the planets' masses, not their physical size or composition. The smallest world weighs-in at 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it a "super-Earth." When it was first revealed that HD 10180 was a multi-planetary system, astronomers of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) detected six exoplanets gravitationally "tugging" on their host star. Using the "radial velocity" exoplanet detection method, the astronomers watched the star's wobble to decipher up to seven worlds measuring between 1.4 to 65 times the mass of Earth. Five exoplanets were found to be 12-to-25 times the mass of Earth -- "Neptune-like" masses -- while another was detected orbiting in the outermost reaches of the system with a mass of 65 Earth masses (a "Saturn-like" world), taking around 2,200 days to complete one orbit. But now, in addition to verifying the signal of the small 1.4 Earth-mass world, there appears to be another two small alien worlds. "In addition to these seven signals, we report two additional periodic signals that are, according to our model probabilities ... statistically significant and unlikely to be caused by noise or data sampling or poor phasecoverage of the observations," Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire, reports in a new research paper (PDF) accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. This basically means that Tuomi has reanalyzed the data from previous observations made by the HARPS spectrograph (attached to the ESO's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile), confirmed signals relating to the seven exoplanets discovered in 2010 and uncovered two new worlds in the process.

What's more, these two new signals represent another two super-Earths, says Tuomi. One is 1.9 times more massive than Earth and the other is 5.1 Earth-masses. Although these may be "super-Earths," the only similarity to Earth is their mass, so don't go getting excited that we may have spotted the much sought-after Earth analogs. The 1.4 Earth-mass exoplanet has an orbital period of only 1.2 days. The two new super-Earths also have very tight orbits, where their "years" last only 10 and 68 days. Therefore, any question of life (as we know it) existing on these worlds is moot -- they will likely be hellishly hot, with no chance of liquid water existing on their surfaces. It's debatable whether these worlds could hold onto any kind of atmosphere as they would be constantly sandblasted by intense stellar winds. As we continue hunting for exoplanets, it's only a matter of time until we make the groundbreaking discovery of an Earth-mass world orbiting its sun-like star within the habitable zone -- the distance from a star where water may exist in a liquid state. Unfortunately, even if planet-hunting projects -- like NASA's Kepler space telescope -- detect such an "Earth-like" world, we'd need an even more powerful means of detecting whether or not such a world even has an atmosphere, let alone whether it has a solid surface with oceans of liquid water. And as for detecting any kind of life, we may actually have to physically go there. But in the case of HD 10180, 127 light-years is one long trek. - Discovery News.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Nearby Planetary Nebula Looks Like Giant Golden Eye In Space - Helix Nebula Lies About 700 Light-Years From Earth!

A nearby planetary nebula shines like a huge golden eye in a new photo snapped by a telescope in Chile.

The image shows the Helix Nebula, which lies about 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius (The Water Bearer). The picture was taken in infrared light by the European Southern Observatory's Vista telescope, one of the instruments at ESO's Paranal Observatory. Helix is a planetary nebula, a strange object that forms when a star like our sun exhausts its hydrogen fuel. The star's outer layers expand and cool, creating a huge envelope of dust and gas. Radiation flowing from the dying star ionizes this envelope, causing it to glow.


Despite their name, planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. Rather, the term refers to their superficial resemblance to giant planets, when observed through early telescopes. [Photos: Nebulas in Deep Space]  The dying star at the heart of the Helix Nebula is evolving to become a white dwarf, a shrunken, super-dense object that can pack a sun's worth of material into a sphere the size of Earth. The star is visible as a tiny blue dot at the center of the picture, researchers said. The Helix Nebula is a complex object composed of dust, ionized material and molecular gas, arrayed in an intricate, flower-like pattern. The main ring of the Helix is about 2 light-years across, roughly equivalent to half the distance between our sun and its closest star.


However, wispy material from the nebula spreads out at least 4 light-years into space from the central star, researchers said. These thin clouds of molecular gas are difficult to see in visible light, but Vista's infrared detectors can pick them out, and they show up in the new image as a dark red haze. Vista's keen eye also reveals fine structure in the planetary nebula's rings, showing how cooler molecular gas is organized. The material clumps into filaments that radiate out from the center. While they may look tiny, these strands of molecular hydrogen -- known as cometary knots -- are each about the size of our solar system. The molecules that compose them can survive the powerful radiation emanating from the dying star precisely because they clump into these knots, which in turn are shielded by dust and molecular gas. It is currently unclear how the cometary knots may have formed, researchers said. The new Vista image also shows a wide array of stars and galaxies in the background, farther away than the Helix Nebula. - Huffington Post.

WATCH: The Helix Nebula.