Tag: Stars

Runaway ‘failed star’ races through the cosmos at 1.2 million mph

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A newly discovered rogue stellar body may well be a “failed star,” but it certainly isn’t a failure when it comes to velocity!  The potential brown dwarf is racing through our Milky Way galaxy at 1.2 million mph (1.9 million kph). That’s about 1,500 times faster than the speed of sound! Thankfully, this cosmic runaway is heading toward the center of the Milky Way and not toward us. However, the object is traveling so fast that it could eventually escape our galaxy entirely.  The incredible speed of this newly uncovered…

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Hubble Measures the Distance to a Supernova

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3 min read Hubble Measures the Distance to a Supernova This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 3810. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Sand, R. J. Foley Measuring the distance to truly remote objects like galaxies, quasars, and galaxy clusters is a crucial task in astrophysics, particularly when it comes to studying the early universe, but it’s a difficult one to complete. We can only measure the distances to a few nearby objects like the Sun, planets, and some nearby stars directly. Beyond that, astronomers need to use…

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Cosmic crime scene reveals ancient supernova aftermath of dead star merger

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The ultimate cosmic “cold case” has lingered for 843 years — and now, space detectives may have solved it at last. In 1181 AD, as the Genpei War raged in Japan, a mystery “guest star” briefly flashed over Asia’s skies. Astronomers had puzzled over the brief event until 2021, when a team of researchers tracked it to its location in the cosmos. Yet, the cause of the event, now designated supernova (SN) 1181, remained shrouded in mystery. That was until a team of scientists used computer modeling and observational analysis…

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Once-in-a-lifetime star explosion, visible from Earth, could happen any day now

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If you’ve always wanted to witness a stellar explosion, your time is about to come.  T Coronae Borealis, also known as T CrB (pronounced tee-core-bore) or the “Blaze Star,” is on the precipice of a massive explosion — one that should be visible from Earth. According to calculations by Brad Schaefer, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Louisiana State University, along with data from amateur astronomers affiliated with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), the nova should occur within a few months of May 2024. T CrB is a binary…

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NASA’s Chandra Peers Into Densest and Weirdest Stars

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Supernova remnant 3C 58. X-ray: NASA/CXC/ICE-CSIC/A. Marino et al.; Optical: SDSS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major The supernova remnant 3C 58 contains a spinning neutron star, known as PSR J0205+6449, at its center. Astronomers studied this neutron star and others like it to probe the nature of matter inside these very dense objects. A new study, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, reveals that the interiors of neutron stars may contain a type of ultra-dense matter not found anywhere else in the Universe. In this image of 3C…

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Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb

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6 Min Read Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows different structural details of the Crab Nebula. New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion. A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the team gathered data that…

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This long-studied star is actually a stellar duo: ‘We were absolutely stunned’

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Shrouded in a dense cloud of gas and dust, a young star in the constellation Ophiuchus that astronomers have studied for decades has been found to be a duo. It would also appear that both members of the pair are encircled by a disk of material within which planets may have just begun coalescing. The twin stars, which reside about 400 light-years from Earth in the WL 20 group, are less than a million years old and appear to have pushed away the billowy orange clouds within which they formed,…

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NASA’s Roman Mission Gets Cosmic ‘Sneak Peek’ From Supercomputers

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Researchers are diving into a synthetic universe to help us better understand the real one. Using supercomputers at the U.S. DOE’s (Department of Energy’s) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, scientists have created nearly 4 million simulated images depicting the cosmos as NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by NSF (the National Science Foundation) and DOE, in Chile will see it. Michael Troxel, an associate professor of physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, led the simulation campaign as part of a…

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‘Super’ Star Cluster Shines in New Look From NASA’s Chandra

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Star Cluster Westerlund 1. X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/M. Guarcello et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare Westerlund 1 is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with other NASA telescopes, is helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced. This is the first data to be publicly released from a project called the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey, or EWOCS, led by astronomers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Palermo. As part of EWOCS,…

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Scientists find slowest spinning ‘radio neutron star’ — it breaks all the dead-star rules

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Astronomers have discovered the slowest spinning radio wave-blasting neutron star ever seen; it takes almost an hour to complete a full rotation.  That may sound rather fast, but these dead stars are known to spin so rapidly that some experience 700 full turns every second. Even the most leisurely of the about 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars, or “pulsars,” discovered so far complete a full rotation in a second or so. This ultra-leisurely neutron star, however, designated ASKAP J1935+2148 and located 16,000 light-years from Earth, is emitting radio light at a rate…

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