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Tag: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Science & Tech
White dwarf “sibling rivalry” explodes
The new find, supernova 2006gz, was classified as a Type Ia due to the lack of hydrogen and other characteristics. However, an analysis combining CfA data with measurements from The Ohio State University suggested that SN 2006gz was unusual and deserved a closer look.
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Science & Tech
Mystery comet explodes into brightness
A once-faint comet has made a sudden leap from obscurity tocenter stage. Comet 17P Holmes, now visible to northern hemisphereresidents, increased its brightness by a factor of one million this week,going from magnitude 17 to 2. This makes it visible to the unaided eye aswell as binoculars and telescopes, offering a unique viewing opportunity forsky…
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Science & Tech
Negative vibes from space
Astronomers have discovered the first negatively charged molecule in space, identifying it from radio signals that were a mystery until now. While about 130 neutral and 14 positively charged molecules are known to exist in interstellar space, this is the first negative molecule, or anion, to be found. “We’ve spotted a rare and exotic species,…
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Science & Tech
Strange new planet baffles astronomers
Using a network of small automated telescopes known as HAT, Smithsonian astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known world. This new planet, designated HAT-P-1, orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. “We could be looking at an entirely new class of planets,” said Gaspar…
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Science & Tech
Cosmic blast announces a future supernova
It’s one thing to theorize about an exploding star the size of our sun, it’s another to look up in the sky and watch one getting ready to blow. Astronomers are now doing this. On Feb. 12, a star known as RS Ophiuchi, some 8,000 trillion miles away, erupted in an explosion so bright it…
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Science & Tech
Jupiter’s ‘big brother’ has moon-forming dust disk
Earth’s moon was created by an early collision with another large planetary body. It was a “chip off the old block.” Mars captured its asteroidal moons as they passed by. But Jupiter made its own moons out of dust and gas remaining from its formation. Now, observations by astronomer Subhanjoy Mohanty of the Harvard- Smithsonian…
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Campus & Community
‘Wintering-over’ at the South Pole
They came to the South Pole, enduring months of bitter cold, darkness, and isolation, to peer at the galaxy’s center through clear, dry skies. And in December, they – scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) – declared “mission accomplished.” After 11 years, the Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory, AST/RO, was dismantled last…
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Science & Tech
Super-Earths may be three times more common than Jupiters
Astronomers have discovered a new “super-Earth” orbiting a red dwarf star located about 9,000 light-years away. This newfound world weighs about 13 times the mass of the Earth and is probably a mixture of rock and ice, with a diameter several times that of Earth. It orbits its star at about the distance of the…
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Science & Tech
Neutron star swaps lead to short gamma-ray bursts
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe, emitting huge amounts of high-energy radiation. For decades their origin was a mystery. Scientists now believe they understand the processes that produce gamma-ray bursts. However, a new study by Jonathan Grindlay of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and his colleagues, Simon Portegies Zwart…
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Science & Tech
Two exiled stars are leaving our galaxy forever
TV reality show contestants aren’t the only ones under threat of exile. Astronomers using the MMT Observatory in Arizona have discovered two stars exiled from the Milky Way galaxy. Those stars are racing out of the Galaxy at speeds of more than 1 million miles per hour – so fast that they will never return.…
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Science & Tech
Cosmic jet looks like giant tornado in space
While examining a region where new stars are forming with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers found a surprise – an object that looks like a giant tornado in space. The apparent tornado is shaped by a cosmic jet packing a powerful punch as it plows through clouds of interstellar gas and dust. They released an…
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Science & Tech
A star that looks like a planet
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a remarkably small brown dwarf surrounded by a dusty disk. The brown dwarf contains only about eight times the mass of Jupiter, making it one of the smallest known brown dwarfs. It is even smaller than several planets around other stars, leading to the question of whether…
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Science & Tech
Einstein’s rings in space
In a 1936 paper, Albert Einstein described how the gravitational field from a massive object can warp space and thereby deflect light. In special cases, the light from a distant object can be so distorted that it creates a complete ring known as an “Einstein ring.” The distortion maps the distribution of matter creating the…
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Science & Tech
A harvest of dozens of new stars
A new infrared image of the reflection nebula NGC 1333, located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus, reveals dozens of stars like the Sun but much younger. “These newborns are less than a million years old – babies by astronomical standards,” said Rob Gutermuth of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).…
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Science & Tech
Space telescope captures cosmic ‘Mountains of Creation’
Captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared eyes, a new majestic image resembles the iconic “Pillars of Creation” picture taken of the Eagle Nebula in visible light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Both views feature star-forming clouds of cool gas and dust that have been sculpted into pillars by radiation and winds from…
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Campus & Community
CfA researchers discover black holes aren’t so black
Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it – not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren’t completely black. As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. That radiation can be used to illuminate the black hole…
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Science & Tech
It takes three Smithsonian observatories to decipher one mystery object
In an exercise that demonstrates the power of a multiwavelength investigation using diverse facilities, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have deciphered the true nature of a mysterious object hiding inside a dark cosmic cloud. They found that the cloud, once thought to be featureless, contains a baby star, or possibly a failed…
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Science & Tech
Black holes aren’t so black
As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. That radiation can be used to illuminate the black hole and paint its profile. Within a few years, astronomers believe they will be able to peer close to the horizon of the black hole at the…
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Science & Tech
Ferreting out the first stars
The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they are invisible to our best telescopes. Until they explode. Hypernovas (more powerful cousins of supernovas) and their associated gamma-ray bursts offer astronomers the possibility of detecting light from the first generations of stars. NASA’s Swift satellite already has seen a gamma-ray burst…
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Campus & Community
Laser’s inventor predicts meeting of science, religion
Nobel laureate and laser inventor Charles H. Townes told a packed Science Center lecture hall Monday (June 13) that science and religion are parallel, rather than antagonistic, disciplines and that he sees them ultimately coming together. “I look at science and religion as quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in…
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Campus & Community
Pros and amateurs team up for discovery
For the first time, amateur and professional astronomers have teamed up to discover a new planet circling a distant star. The planet was detected by looking for the effect of its gravitational field on light from a more distant star, a technique known as “microlensing.” It is only the second world to be discovered using…
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Campus & Community
Seeing the universe’s most powerful explosion
Reporting in the May 12 issue of Nature, astronomers announced that they have penetrated the heart of the universe’s most powerful explosion – a gamma-ray burst (GRB). Using the PAIRITEL (Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope) robotic telescope on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., they detected a flash of infrared light accompanying the burst of high-energy radiation that…
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Science & Tech
Amateur and professional astronomers team to find new planet
Astronomer Scott Gaudi of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believes that microlensing has the potential for wide use in the future: “With improving technologies and techniques, the first Earth-sized planet may be found by microlensing.” Last year marked the first discovery made using microlensing. This second find establishes the immediate usefulness of the technique in…
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Science & Tech
Robotic telescope penetrates heart of universe’s most powerful explosion
Cullen Blake, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author on the paper, said that the simultaneous observation of infrared light with a gamma-ray burst was unprecedented. This observation was made possible by PAIRITEL’s ability to aim at objects quickly and automatically. PAIRITEL pointed at the burst minutes after the Integral…
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Science & Tech
Case of Sedna’s ‘missing moon’ solved
In trying to solve the riddle of Sedna’s “missing moon,” scientists Scott Gaudi, Krzysztof (Kris) Stanek and colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics took measurements that have cleared up the mystery by showing that a moon wasn’t needed after all. Sedna is rotating much more rapidly than originally believed, spinning once on its axis…
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Campus & Community
Light detected from alien planets
Light from two worlds far from our solar system has been detected for the first time. The planets that emit it are too hot to be inhabited, at least by intelligent beings, but an Earthly satellite has gotten the best views yet of planets orbiting other stars like the sun. “It’s an awesome experience to…
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Science & Tech
Astronomers measure slowest motion across the sky
“A snail crawling on Mars would appear to be moving across the surface more than 100 times faster than the motion we measured for this galaxy,” said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a co-author on the paper. Reid and his colleagues used the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to…
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Campus & Community
Cool brown dwarf may give birth to planets
Solar systems like our own may be forming around dim stars scattered all over the Milky Way. It’s possible that some of these systems could harbor planets with water and even life. The likelihood of such a possibility has increased with the discovery of a disk of gas and dust orbiting a star only about…
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Campus & Community
Biggest stars produce strongest magnets
Assistant Professor of Astronomy Bryan Gaensler and colleagues have discovered the source of powerful magnetic objects in the universe called magnetars, finding that some of the biggest stars in the cosmos become the strongest magnets when they die. First discovered in 1998, a magnetar is an exotic kind of neutron star – a city-sized ball…