Wonders of the Cosmos

[Condor]

Oh well OK if you insist.

You don't deserve any in the first place - since owning up the universe was all my idea.

But I still wanted to give you some out of the goodness of my heart.

[Condor]

Cloud associated from Earth

This NASA image released on May 4, 2010 from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth. The formation of new stars in galaxies like the Milky Way has declined five-fold in the last three billion years, initial findings of the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope showed.… Read more »
(AFP/NASA/ESA)
Scientists say the discovery of a vast hole in space may provide a new glimpse at the end of the star-forming process. In this photo, an image obtained from the Herschel Space Observatory shows most the cloud associated with the Rosette nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation.







Outer-Space Mysteries Capture the Web
by Claudine Zap


An "impossible" star is born. And a hole in space shows what happens once a star is formed. Plus, an out-of-this world zombie! It's your Buzz space roundup.

Caught on telescope: "impossible" star
Get out of the way, Hollywood. This star will be brighter than every celeb on the planet combined. Scientists’ European-built Herschel space telescope is their version of Tinseltown’s paparazzi, which caught on tape the beginning of a big star. And we mean really, really big. So enormous, it would block out the sun. Not to mention Angelina Jolie.

Researchers can't explain how what they're calling the "impossible" star came to be. The star was discovered in a star-forming cloud in the Milky Way Galaxy called RCW 120. And here's the coolest part: Even as a baby star, it is already eight to ten times larger than our sun, and it's still feeding on the gas and dust clouds around it. The star is set to be one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years — meaning, this star won't ever be a part of our lives. But hey, if movies are still around in the way future, this gigunda star should seriously considering signing with a talent agent.

How did that get there?
That's not the only unexplained mystery in space. That same Herschel infrared telescope also picked up an enormous hole in space. A story from Space.com has a scientist noting, and we quote, "No one has ever seen a hole like this." The surprising find is confounding scientists because it is so unexpected. When a star forms, it's surrounded by gas and dust. (See above.) But how a newborn star shakes off the space debris to emerge from its brith cloud hadn't been fully understood. Until now: Black patches near the stars were always around a reflective gas, NGC 1999.

Everyone figured the black patches near the star were gas, but the telescope would have picked up on that. Finally, scientists realized they were looking at a big, empty hole where the space dust used to be — possibly caused by some of the young stars puncturing a hole with the jets of gas. For researchers, this amazing discovery is a helpful step into understanding how a star is formed.

It wants to eat your satellite's brain
Finally, scientists have no idea how to stop a fully powered satellite that has gone rogue and is no longer accepting orders from earth. This so-called "zombie" satellite, known as Galaxy 15 (which carried the SyFy channel), continues along in the Earth's orbit — on a course to interfere with the communications of a fully functioning SES satellite beaming down programming to its customers in Luxembourg. We know, we know: We're just happy it's not us.

[Condor]

Cosmic Rosebud




March 16, 2010 -- This beautiful cosmic rosebud shows the infrared emissions being generated by a group of young stars (the blue dots to the right of image center) only a few million years old emerging from the cloud they used as their stellar nursery. The red glow (resembling the petals of a rose) is the heated dust that remains behind.

Since its launch in December 2009, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been slowly scanning the cosmos, picking out objects that are invisible to optical telescopes. This time, WISE has captured this star-forming region in its lens: the Berkeley 59 cluster in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 3,300 light-years from Earth.

Surrounding the red "petals" is another cloud (the green glow). This nebulocity contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (or PAH) molecules. Despite its 'aromatic' name, you're more likely to find PAHs as the burnt gunk stuck to the underside of your barbecue than inside any scented flower.

PAHs are a toxic byproduct of burnt fuel, but when they are detected in nebulae, this material indicates that stars were born nearby. Interestingly, PAHs are also hypothesized to be the building blocks of the most basic forms of life.

Dotted throughout the green haze are some second generation stars glowing red. It is thought that the young stars in the center of the cluster have compressed the gas and dust with their powerful stellar winds to kick-start the birth of more stars. There is also a supernova remnant (called NGC 7822) associated with this region, an explosion that gave this rosebud its bulbous shape.

-- Ian O'Neill, Discovery News.

Image credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team.

[Condor]

Baby Star Blows a Bubble, Force-Feeding a Stellar 'Goliath'




What we're looking at here is a bubble in a star-forming nebula about 4300 light years from Earth. But how did the bubble get there?

The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, an orbiting telescope that is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary, sees the cosmos in infrared light, meaning it can see deep into places visible wavelengths cannot penetrate. In this case, Herschel is studying a bubble called RCW 120 that would otherwise be obscured by the surrounding nebulous gas and dust.

SLIDE SHOW: Want to see more star-forming nebulae? Browse the Discovery News "Best of Hubble" 20th anniversary slide show.

Invisible to Herschel, there's a young, hot 2.5 million year old star right in the center of the bubble, blasting the nebula with intense radiation. The pressure of this radiation is enough to hollow out this empty cavity inside the nebula.

Although this looks very interesting, RCW 120 has a surprise hiding inside the shell of dense gas surrounding the bubble. Right at the bottom of the bubble is a very bright star. It turns out that this is the Goliath of stars with the potential to become one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy.

BIG PIC: Herschel Sees Big Stellar Babies: The infrared space observatory has a habit of spotting star nurseries and this image of the Rosette Nebula is something to shout about.

This massive star didn't appear by chance. Because the nebula bubble-blowing star has created a cavity, pushing the gas to the bubble's outermost edge, secondary star birth has been sparked. The gas has become so dense that clouds of the dense material have collapsed, kick-starting fusion and started up a new generation of stars.

Scientists using Herschel have concluded that this unexpectedly large embryonic star is already 8-10 times the mass of our sun, with the potential to grow a lot bigger. They also estimate that the surrounding star-feeding region contains as much as 2000 solar masses-worth of gas. This thing could grow a lot bigger.
Although all this gas wont be eaten by the star in one sitting, it does pose an interesting question. The biggest stars in our galaxy have been observed to not exceed 150 solar masses, but according to theory, they shouldn't grow more than 8 solar masses. At this size, the star becomes so hot and so bright that it blasts any surrounding gas away. If the 8 solar mass star blows all the surrounding matter away (much like the star that is creating the bubble, above), how can the most massive stars grow?

For now, this question remains open, but it is hoped that Herschel will continue to return stunning imagery deep inside star-forming nebulae so a potential answer can be found. But if I had to place a bet, I reckon the most massive stars are force-fed dense gas by smaller young stars on the edges of 'bubbles' like RCW 120. It looks like Herschel scientists are suggesting the same mechanism too.


Image of RCW 120 (ESA)

Source: Herschel press release.

Thanks to Mike (@RiddlerMusic) for telling me about this stellar news!

[Condor]

MYSTIC_MOUNTAIN




April 22, 2010 -- The Hubble team describes this awe-inspiring image as a "fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds [that] looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination." And they're not wrong! Resembling a mystical pillar that even James Cameron would have difficulties recreating in CGI, this brand new Hubble Space Telescope scene overloads the senses with detail.

As the famous space telescope gears up to celebrate its 20th anniversary this weekend, Hubble has taken this highly detailed photograph deep within the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina.

What we're looking at is a turbulent stellar nursery at the very top of a 3 light-year long
pillar of thick gas and dust. This is where baby stars are born, feeding off material inside the craggy tower. From the outside, material is being eroded by savage winds of energetic particles and intense radiation from young stars in open space.

The pressure on the dusty pillar caused by the emissions from these stars is triggering stellar processes inside, seeding more newborn stars that will eventually eat their way to freedom, "hatching" from their nursery like their cousins before them.

Streamers of hot ionized gas can be clearly seen blasting from the edges of the pillar, products of the violent birthing of stars. Two of the most prominent streamers -- one at the very top of the longest finger of dust (originating from the bulbous pinnacle) and one in the center of the image (known as HH 901 and HH 902, respectively) -- are caused by swirling disks around newborn stars, dragging material onto the stars' surfaces and blasting it out as energetic jets.

Although it's about to celebrate its 20th birthday, the aging observatory remains the best there is to show us how stars are made deep inside violent star-making factories. But the best thing is that Hubble has a lot more cosmos to show us yet.

--Ian O'Neill, Discovery News

Credit and link to high resolution pictures: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STSci).