Astronomers have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the universe

Using the 50-meter diameter Large Millimeter Telescope, located on the summit of Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano in the central state of Puebla, one of Mexico’s highest mountains, astronomers have observed what they are calling “outrageously luminous” galaxies, because there is no scientific terms apply.

The newly observed galaxies are about 10 billion years old and were formed only about four billion years after the Big Bang.

The galaxies brightness is due in part to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that magnifies light passing near massive objects, making them look about 10 times brighter than they really are.

For the complete article click HERE

13+ Billion Year Old Galaxy Photographed by Hubble

An international team of astronomers, using NASA's Hubble space telescope, has set a new
distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe.

This infant galaxy, located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major, named GN-z11, was photographed as it was seen 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.


Full NASA article can be read HERE

A Research Team Has Discovered 854 Ultra-Dark Galaxies

A color image made with multi-band images from the Subaru Telescope.

 

 

 

 

 

A team of researchers from Stony Brook University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, have discovered 854 "ultra-dark galaxies" in the Coma Cluster.  The team analyzed data from the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope. The new discovery surpasses the 2014 discovery of 47 mysterious dark galaxies by more than 800 and seems to suggest that galaxy clusters are the key environment for the evolution of these mysterious dark galaxies.

A small region of 6 x 6 arc-minutes is cut out from large Coma Cluster images. Yellow circles show two of the 47 dark galaxies discovered last year, and green circles are the ones 

discovered in this new study.
Credit: NAOJ 

Read the complete Science Daily article, HERE

As Many As Half of all Stars May Reside Outside of Galaxies

Scientists from the U.S., Japan & Korea have released a study that concludes that as many as half of all stars may not be affiliated with a galaxy but instead may have been pushed out of their parent galaxy by mergers and collisions.

Individually, these stars are way too faint to be detected, but collectively they create a background of fluctuating near-infrared light.   This diffuse glow is as bright as all the known galaxies combined and may mean that galaxies do not have sharp edges but soft boundaries that spread out to connect to other galaxies.

Read the complete ABC News article HERE

Ancient Galaxy is the Farthest Object Ever Discovered

Astronomers using data from Hubble and the Keck 1 telescope located at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have discovered the oldest galaxy ever, discovered to this point.

The galaxy, which astronomers are calling z8_GND_5296 was formed around  the first 700 million years after the big band.   This would make it the oldest and most distant galaxy discovered so far.

The galaxy is so distant, it is like looking back in time some 13+ billion years ago! 

z8_GND_5296  is also making a name for itself for another reason as well.  It has been estimated that this incredibly distant  galaxy is producing stars about 150 times more quickly than the Milky Way. 

For example,  the Milky Way may produce about one or two sunlike stars each year, z8_GND_5296 birthed about 300 per year approximately, however that was  13 billion years ago. 

For more information check out Space.com for this article   HERE

Was the Early Universe a Cosmic Zoo?

The question, up until recently, was - how did the young universe appear?  Was it an orderly cross section of a few well mannered galaxies or was it a miss-mash of varied galactic types.

According to a recent article in Space.com, NASA's Hubble space telescope's "CANDLES" (Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extra-galactic Legacy Survey) study shows that the universe, even 11 billion years ago, "the diversity of galaxies in the early universe was as varied as the many galaxy types seen today"   This conclusion based on a galaxy classification system known as the Hubble Sequence of which CANDLES is a part.  The Sequence shows that the universe over the past 11 billion years was just as diverse as present day.

This becomes important when we look at how the Hubble Sequence is set up and the results that were garnered from the young universe.  The Sequence divides galaxies into three basic types based on their appearance:  Spiral which has plenty of gas for star building.  As the gas runs out galaxies transition to elliptical galaxies which are for all intents, blobs or middle aged to older.  In between Spiral and elliptical is the transitional lenticular galaxy which has a blob like bright center but also maintains some spiral arm structures.  The lenticular galaxies are middle aged.   What the Sequence is showing however is that all three galaxy types were in evidence in the young universe. 

From the Space.com article:

• Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany said "The galaxies look remarkably mature, which is not predicted by galaxy formation models to be the case that early on in the history of the universe."
• While past research showed that these distinct types of galaxy morphology existed as early as 8 billion years ago, the new study extends that understanding back another 2.5 billion years.

Read the complete Space.com article here

Don't Look Now, But We Have 2k Rogue Black Holes Tailing Us!

Does the thought of this kinda give you nightmares?  It should...you know that horrid old gag they still pull in scary movies?  You know, when someone calls on the phone to say the killer is right there in the house!  Well we may have 2 thousand of the worst type of  dealers of death practicably in the same room with us! And are we talking about your average singularity?  nope Galaxy class Black Holes.

How is this possible?  Haven't we been told that when a galaxy starts to form, its the central black hole that is powering the growth, right?  Well yeah, up to a point.  But when galaxies merge, the complex gravitational dance that can eject one of the massive central black holes.

Implausible as that sounds, astronomers have found evidence that in the space just outside the Milky-way of thousands of orphan black holes.


IO9 article

 Credit: Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA.

Nebula May be an Indicator of Galaxy's Newest Black Hole

W49B, shown in this photo is the remnants of the end of a super-massive star's life.  This super-nova took place about 26,000 LY away, as seen from Earth the explosion took place, according to the Wired article, the object is only about 1000 years old. 

(Ok, other than 1000 years old and possibly one of the youngest in the galaxy, something about that statement caught me strange. the Wired article  was worded just as I entered it.  2600 lys away and a 1000 years old.  Do you see yet what has me going....ahhhhh what???  Let me explain...and where does my logic fall down?  Light travels at light speed, for the most part right?  When the super-nova blew, light traveled from it to us.  Said star is 26000 LY, we are not  interested so much in distance but in time 26,000 years time to be exact.  So how can something that blew 26,000 years ago be anything but 26,000 years old? )

Oddities in age not withstanding, W49B is still an odd creature.  Looking at it's shape it is evident that the collapse and release of matter was not uniform.  You can see from the picture that instead of a uniform globe, the super-nova left huge spikes at what may have been it's poles.  

Also, data gathered from the Chandra X-Ray telescope:

• only half of it showed concentrations of iron while sulfur and silicon were spread evenly throughout. This type of explosion, known as a bipolar supernova, has never been seen before in the galaxy.

Chandra can also look "inside" of the nebula cloud:

• Intermediate-mass stars will give rise to neutron stars — heavy, compact objects that emit copious amounts of X-rays or radio pulses.  Since these signals are not present, scientists suggest that the star was massive enough to continue the collapse all the way to a black hole.

Read the complete Wired article here

• 
  

Hubble Finds Two Galaxies Lined Up For Who Knows What!

Kallamis writes....  

Found this on Space.com. There is no article, just one statement.

   Apparently galaxies NGC3314A and NGC3314B are not on a collision course, but are actually separated by thousands of light years. No real info there but that, but watching it is relaxing, even though it only lasts about 2 minutes, and you of course have an ad first. Here's the link for anyone interested in watching it. They have a lot more there as well.

Video link here

Newly Discovered Galaxy Making Stars at a Prodigious Rate

Almost 13 billion years ago, light left a small cluster of stars and headed towards a collection of stars that one day would make up the Milky Way galaxy. When it finally reached us, the light proved to be one of the more startling discoveries of the year.

An indistinct blob collection of stars so incredibly distant that when light left it, the universe itself was only 750 million years older or a mere 5% of its' present age.

As fascinating as that is, galaxy GN-108036 continued to surprise. Because of the energy output of the small cluster scientists suspected at first a fairly large system which proved wrong. GN-108036 appears to be only 1/100th as massive but is producing stars 30 times faster than the Milky Way! This goes against all previous results. Clusters that young had never been found to be so bright and energetic.  Scientists using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer were  surprised by how bright the galaxy appeared.  Not only is it bright but extremely red shifted.  The redder an object is, the farther away it is and the faster it is traveling.  GN-108036's red shift is 7.2 which indicates extreme distance and speed, making it among only a handful of other galaxies so distant.

Bahram Mobasher, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California who announced the discovery said that GN-108036 likely represents the ancestor of the more massive and evolved galaxies seen today.

NASA's site also adds:

• The galaxy was discovered and confirmed using the Subaru telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, respectively, both located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

NASA

Thanks to Dan for the heads up. 

Ultra Red Galaxies Discovered

Science Daily reports of a news type of extreme galaxy discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These galaxies are so very red that not even Hubble can detect them. Spitzer it seems is much more sensitive to infrared than Hubble.

It would appear that the redness comes from a variety of causes. First is their great distance. At the very edge of the universe and created just 1 billion years after the big bang accounts for a great deal of red shift, at that distance the universe expansion causes massive red shift. Also these galaxies appear to be make up of mostly red stars plus the amount of dust between them and us causes attenuation of all but the longest wavelengths of light.

What makes these galaxies even more unusual is that at that distance, galaxies should be young proto galaxies for the most part. These galaxies have all the monikers of extreme age.

Read complete article here

photo is artist representation. courtesy of physorg.org

Single Spiral Galaxy?

I like looking at beautiful astronomical photos, but I seldom post them because after wow, and that's beautiful, there isn't much to say.

This picturehas all of that and more, but it is the questions that it generatest that I think makes it note worthy.

Before I saw this photo in the Daily Galaxy blog I would have staunchly insisted that this type of galaxy was not possible. Seeing this odd single spiral galaxy you would think that some natural law but there it stubbornly sits.

According to the article:

• (this is) galaxy NGC 4725 --a barred spiral galaxy about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Corna Berenices.
• (this photo was taken) August 25, 2003 (by the) NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

Daily Galaxy article

A Galaxy With Two Super Massive Black Holes?!! How'd that happen?

What is more scary than one huge black monstrosity that consumes everything that come withing reach of massive jaws and ravenous appetite? Two scary black monsters that's what!

Check the pic that I have posted with this entry that I found in the Daily Galaxy.

It is generally accepted now that every galaxy has a singularity massing millions of solar masses or in rare cases a billion of our sun's mass located at it's center.

So here we have a picture of a galaxy 425 million light-years distant. Both super massive black holes are pumping out prodigious amounts of energy. Even though they look like they are close in a cosmic kind of way, they are actually separated by 11,000 light years! According to the Daily Galaxy article that equals about 1/3 the distance from the edge of the Milky-Way towards the center.

The presence of two super massive black holes most likely occurred when two galaxies collided.
You would think that dual super massive singularities would be a fairly rare occurrence but it seems that astronomers are if not common, a lot more likely to take place when galaxies do collide.

The Daily Galaxy article is a fascinating read - check it out here

Galaxy Formation Started Much Earlier Than Expected

A Science Daily article reports that recent research into when galaxy formation started has brought to light some rather startling findings.

Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy whose stars were born unexpectedly early in cosmic history. They found a very distant galaxy that began forming stars just 200 million years after the Big Bang. One such galaxy was observed through a gravity lens formed by a cluster of galaxies called Abell 383, without the lensing effect, the extremely distant galaxy would have been too faint to observe.

Though its not the oldest by several hundred million years, it is very unusual in that it is comprised almost totally of very old stars, unlike most of the very distant galaxies that contain mostly young bright stars. This told researchers that the galaxy was made up of stars already nearly 750 million years old -- pushing back the epoch of its formation to about 200 million years after the Big Bang, much further than had expected.

Read more here

Most Massive Black Hole Discovered

Wow, now this is just plain amazing! According to an article in 'The Daily Galaxy, the Chandra space telescope has uncovered a singularity in the M87 galaxy located in the Virgo Cluster that is so massive as to almost be beyond belief.

The black hole at the center of the super massive M87 galaxy tops out at 6.6 billion solar masses, yes BILLION. To put that into perspective, the central black hole in our Milky Way is a very respectable 4 million solar masses. Also what makes M87's singularity so frightening is the diameter of it's event horizon, which is aproximatly 20 billion km across!

Astronomers from the University of Texas :

• theorizes that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes.... of 100 or so smaller galaxies.

Another interesting theory concerning the M87 black hole is that due to it's size and relative proximity, may be the first black hole that we will be able to "see".

Check out the rest of the Daily Galaxy article here

Hubble Discovers Oldest Object in the Universe

According to NASA's website, the Hubble Space Telescope has found what could be the most distant object ever seen in the universe. Light first left this object 13.2 billion years ago. That makes it about 150 million years older than the previous record holder. That makes the age of the universe a bit older than 13.5 billion years old and somewhere nearer 13.7 Billion years.

The extremely dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars. This small dim galaxy would have existed 480 million years after the big bang, very exciting news when you consider that this finding puts our understanding of the early universe and when the first stars arrived. This also means that there is now evidence that the rate of star birth in the early universe grew dramatically, increasing 10 fold from 480 million years to 650 million years after the big bang.

One thing is very evident however. There were big changes during this early period of the universe. It's clear that as astronomers peer further back and further out in time and space, they're going to see even more dramatic changes, closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form.

Hubble Finds The Oldest Galaxy So Far

Tim Sayell send in a great article concerning a recent discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Studying a NASA photograph, released earlier this year, European astronomers have uncovered a galaxy 13.1 billion years old. That makes the universe just shy of 600 million years old when it was a separate entity. It is quite literally the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far. It is so old in fact that the astronomers do not even think it exists in it observed form any longer. It was most likely swept up by younger and much larger galaxies.

What makes this discovery equally important is the age of the galaxy in the image. Astronomers put it at apx. 100 million years. They can say that with a fair amount of certainty because of the lack of heavy metals and an abundance of massive blue giant stars. The age is important in that at the time this old galaxy was first formed, the universe was itself only 100 million or so years old. Astronomers feel that they are very close to discovering objects from the creation of the universe.

complete article in Yahoo News

A Galaxy Built for Speed!

What would a galaxy look like if it were hurtling through intergalactic space at 600 km?
Well check out NGC 1427A. Weird huh? With that arrow head shape it even looks like it's screaming ahead, hell bent....Well according to the article in IO9, this is why:

• NGC 1427A looks like it's got a swept-back shape because.... in between galaxies there is an ethereally-thin fog of gas.(That's) enough ... to have an effect on a passing galaxy. The boomerang shape of the galaxy is because that side is facing into the "wind," ... and being compressed. The pink curve in the image is due to rigorous star-formation going on there, where the gas clouds are collapsing from the pressure and birthing stars at a prodigious rate.

Read the complete IO9 article here

Scientists devise method of studying extremely distant black holes

From ScienceDaily:

Astronomers now have a new, simple method to study black holes up to eight billion light years away – thousands of times farther away than black holes can be measured today. researchers have concluded that the larger the black hole at the center of a spiral galaxy, the tighter the galaxy’s arms wrap around itself. If correct, the simple relationship would give astronomers an easy way to determine the size of the masses of super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies at extreme distances. Since super-massive black holes were discovered in nearby galaxies, researchers have been determining their masses by looking at how fast the stars were moving in the very central regions of those galaxies. But that method only works for relatively nearby galaxies. One of the important reasons to learn about the every distant black holes is, when you are looking at galaxies very far away, you are looking at them as they were in the past, so you can learn about how masses of black holes grow over time.

Hubble Gallery: Colliding Galaxies

Shaun Saunders sends in a link from Wired: NASA has released 59 new high-resolution images of galaxies colliding across the universe to mark the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th birthday. Many of the galaxies were first compiled by Halton Arp in the mid-'60s book, The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which cataloged misshapen galaxies. With the Hubble's sensitive cameras and tools, the shapes of these peculiar galaxies have been revealed as the product of gravitational interactions between the huge clusters of stars.

click here for some stunning examples of these collisions.