←
SPACE WATCH
Season’s Greetings!
Cosmic Ornament
NASA – With the holiday season in full swing, a new image from an assembly of telescopes reveals a pulsar that appears like a spinning cosmic ornament. Combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton were used in the discovery of a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC. This is the first time a pulsar, which is a spinning, ultra-dense star, has been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.
In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are colored red and green. The pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is the bright white source located on the right-hand side of the image in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell. The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence of a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar. The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image.
SXP 1062 interests astronomers because the Chandra and XMM-Newton data show that it is rotating unusually slowly — about once every 18 minutes. (In contrast, some pulsars are found to revolve multiple times per second, including most newly born pulsars.) This relatively leisurely pace of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray pulsars in the SMC.
Scientists have estimated that the supernova remnant around SXP 1062 is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, as it appears in the image. This means that the pulsar is very young, from an astronomical perspective, since it was presumably formed in the same explosion that produced the supernova remnant. Therefore, assuming that it was born with rapid spin, it is a mystery why SXP 1062 has been able to slow down by so much, so quickly. Work has already begun on theoretical models to understand the evolution of this unusual object. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Potsdam/L. Oskinova et al.
Related articles
- Galactic Views (15) (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
- Galactic Views (8) (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
- Galactic Views (2) (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
Source: the Net economy
NASA – 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. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates 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. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the hot gas in this dynamic system, and optical data (gold) from the Very Large Telescope shows the galaxies. The hot, X-ray bright gas has an average temperature of about 30 million degrees.
NASA – 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. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates 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. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the hot gas in this dynamic system, and optical data (gold) from the Very Large Telescope shows the galaxies. The hot, X-ray bright gas has an average temperature of about 30 million degrees.
NASA – In celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope‘s deployment in April 2011, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute pointed Hubble’s eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.
Resembling festive lights on a holiday wreath, this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the nearby spiral galaxy M74 is an iconic reminder of the impending season. Bright knots of glowing gas light up the spiral arms, indicating a rich environment of star formation.
NASA – In 2004, an international team of astronomers had, for the first time, observed a stellar “survivor” emerge from a double star system involving an exploded supernova.
NASA – Cygnus X hosts many young stellar groupings. The combined outflows and ultraviolet radiation from the region’s numerous massive stars have heated and pushed gas away from the clusters, producing cavities of hot, lower-density gas.
Using X-ray data from Chandra, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, scientists were able to determine the spin of Cygnus X-1 with unprecedented accuracy, showing that the black hole is spinning at very close to its maximum rate. Its event horizon — the point of no return for material falling towards a black hole — is spinning around more than 800 times a second. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Optical: Digitized Sky Survey more> https://twurl.nl/qnd6pv
NASA – Thousands of sparkling young stars nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. This stellar “jewel box” is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20,000 light-years away. This image shows a young star cluster surrounded by a vast region of dust and gas. The image reveals stages in the life cycle of stars. The nebula was first discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834. The image spans roughly 17 light-years. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage
Pushing the limits of its powerful vision, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy in this image from 2002. These extremely old, dim “clockwork stars” provide a completely independent reading on the age of the universe without relying on measurements of the expansion of the universe.