From Keck: “Mega-galaxy is Missing Link in History of Cosmos”

Keck Observatory

May 21, 2013
Steve Jefferson
Communications Officer
W. M. Keck Observatory
sjefferson@keck.hawaii.edu
808.881.3827

“Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, according to UC Irvine-led research conducted on the W. M. Keck Observatory and other research facilities around the world. The results will be published today in the journal Nature.

Credit: JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/Keck Observatory/STScI/NRAO/SAO/ESA/NASA

Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare – the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds, said the scientists, who relied primarily on data from Keck Observatory’s NIRC2 fitted with the laser guide star adaptive optics (LGSAO) system. The new mega-galaxy, dubbed HXMM01, is the brightest, most luminous and most gas-rich submillimeter-bright galaxy merger known.

HXMM01 is fading away as fast as it forms, a victim of its own cataclysmic birth. As the two parent galaxies smashed together, they gobbled up huge amounts of hydrogen, emptying that corner of the universe of the star-making gas.

‘These galaxies entered a feeding frenzy that would quickly exhaust the food supply in the following hundreds of million years and lead to the new galaxy’s slow starvation for the rest of its life,’ said lead author Hai Fu, a UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar.

The discovery solves a riddle in understanding how giant elliptical galaxies developed quickly in the early universe and why they stopped producing stars soon after. Other astronomers have theorized that giant black holes in the heart of the galaxies blew strong winds that expelled the gas. But cosmologist Asantha Cooray, the UC Irvine team’s leader, said that they and colleagues across the globe found definitive proof that cosmic mergers and the resulting highly efficient consumption of gas for stars are causing the quick burnout.

‘Finding this type of galaxy is as important as the discovery of the Archaeopteryx was in understanding dinosaurs’ evolution into birds, because they were both caught at a critical transitional phase,’ Fu said.

The new galaxy was initially spotted by UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar Julie Wardlow, also with Cooray’s group. She noticed ‘an amazing, bright blob’ in images of the so-called cold cosmos – areas where gas and dust come together to form stars – recorded by the European Space Agency’s Herschel telescope with important contributions from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. ‘Herschel captured carpets of galaxies, and this one really stood out.’

Follow-up views at a variety of wavelengths were obtained at more than a dozen ground-based observatories, particularly the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

‘The NIRC2/LGSAO image has revealed the existing stellar population of this pair of galaxies,’ Fu said. “The radiation captured by Keck tells us how many stars have already been formed in the system at the observed epoch. These data told us the constituents of the galaxy pair: they are each made of half gas and half stars, which indicates they are nascent galaxies in formation.

The NIRSPEC spectra measured the velocity difference of the two galaxies at only 300 km/s, indicating that the two galaxies are soon to merge instead of just flying by each other. The spectra also show the high-velocity winds driven by the intense star formation in both galaxies, uncovering the violent environment in these galaxies.

UC Irvine graduate student Jae Calanog is co-author of the paper, as are scientists at 27 other institutions in the U.S., Canada, Spain, France, England and South Africa. Funding was provided by NASA.

See the full article here.

Mission
To advance the frontiers of astronomy and share our discoveries with the world.

Today Keck Observatory is supported by both public funding sources and private philanthropy. As a 501(c)3, the organization is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA), whose Board of Directors includes representatives from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, with liaisons to the board from NASA and the Keck Foundation.

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From ESO: “Picture of the Week”

20 May 2013

Admiring the Galaxy

“It is difficult for even the most seasoned astronomer to resist taking time out of a busy observing schedule to stop and stare up at the gloriously rich southern sky. This image is a self portrait taken by astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons, who took this photo between observing sessions at ESO’s La Silla Observatory.

This bold photo shows the contrast between a simple, still and dark figure on Earth and the brilliant and bright starry night sky. In this picture, the sky is dominated by the enormous splash of stars and dust which make up the centre of the Milky Way, our home galaxy.

ESO’s observatories are located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a region with very few inhabitants, which combines very dark nights with extremely clear atmospheric conditions, both factors conducive to making high quality observations.

La Silla is ESO’s first observatory. Inaugurated in 1969, it is home to a number of telescopes with mirror diameters of up to 3.6 metres. With more than 300 clear nights every year, La Silla is in an ideal position to house advanced observing instruments, but it also makes it a fabulous place to just stop and gaze up into the sky.

Alan submitted this photograph to the Your ESO Pictures Flickr group. The Flickr group is regularly reviewed and the best photos are selected to be featured in our Picture of the Week series or in our picture gallery.

See the original article and much more here.

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ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The European Extremely Large Telescope
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Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX)

ESO, European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.

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From JPL at Caltech: “Galaxy’s Ring of Fire”

“The galaxy, a spiral beauty called Messier 94, is located about 17 million light-years away. In this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, infrared light is represented in different colors, with blue having the shortest wavelengths and red, the longest.

How many rings do you see in this new image of the galaxy Messier 94, also known as NGC 4736? While at first glance one might see a number of them, astronomers believe there is just one. This image was captured in infrared light by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Historically, Messier 94 was considered to have two strikingly different rings: a brilliant, compact band encircling the galaxy’s core, and a faint, broad, swath of stars falling outside its main disk.

Astronomers have recently discovered that the outer ring, seen here in the deep blue glow of starlight, might actually be more of an optical illusion. A 2009 study combined infrared Spitzer observations with those from other telescopes, including ultraviolet data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, now operated by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; visible data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; and shorter-wavelength infrared light from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). This more complete picture of Messier 94 indicates that we are really seeing two separate spiral arms, which, from our perspective, take on the appearance of a single, unbroken ring.

The bright inner ring of Messier 94 is very real, however. This area is sometimes identified as a “starburst ring” because of the frenetic pace of star formation in the confined area. Starbursts like this can often be triggered by gravitational encounters with other galaxies, but in this case might be caused by the galaxy’s oval shape.”

See the full article here.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although the facility has a Pasadena postal address, it is actually headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge [1], on the northwest border of Pasadena. JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network.

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From Fermilab- “From the Center for Particle Astrophysics Cosmic background: from quantum to cosmos”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Craig Hogan, director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, wrote this column.

“The first great breakthrough of 20th-century physics came just as it dawned, in late 1900, when Max Planck derived from simple quantum principles an exact universal formula for the spectrum, or amount of light at each frequency, emitted by opaque matter.

A related breakthrough in cosmology came many decades later, when it was found that radiation with precisely Planck’s spectrum is found not only in the laboratory, but also coming from all directions in the sky. This simple fact carries a profound message about cosmic history: The entire universe is expanding from a state when matter everywhere was once hot, dense and opaque. The cosmic radiation is left over from the earliest moments of the cosmic expansion—the big bang.

In recent decades, measurements have shown that the cosmic radiation is not at exactly just one temperature, but varies by a tiny amount in different directions—a little colder here, a little hotter there. The early universe was not perfectly uniform, which is a good thing, because those tiny variations eventually led to the formation of galaxies and, of course, us.

Measurements of cosmic background radiation have advanced rapidly in the last year with new high-resolution detectors in Chile and at the South Pole and with the release in March of definitive all-sky data from the Planck satellite. Some of these results offer tantalizing hints of new physics beyond the Standard Model…Fermilab scientists invented many techniques of precision cosmology, helped create the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that defines the state of the art in precision measurement of cosmic structure with galaxies, and are about to start operating a still deeper cosmic mapping project, the Dark Energy Survey. Exciting choices lie ahead as we plan our participation in future experiments, perhaps including measurements of cosmic background radiation.”

See the full and very interesting article here.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

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From NASA Ames / Spitzer: “NASA Develops Key to Cosmic Carbon’s Molecular Evolution”

Spitzer

05.14.2013
Ruth Dasso Marlaire
Public Affairs Office
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-4789

“Scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., now have the capability to systematically investigate the molecular evolution of cosmic carbon. For the first time, these scientists are able to automatically interpret previously unknown infrared emissions from space that come from surprisingly complex organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are abundant and important across the universe.

For the first time, scientists are able to automatically interpret previously unknown infrared emissions from space that come from surprisingly complex organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are abundant and important across the universe. They use spectra of infrared radiation to identify unknown substances in space. These spectra are as good as fingerprints for identification purposes. Analyzing the PAH bands represents a powerful new astronomical tool to trace the evolution of cosmic carbon and, at the same time, probe conditions across the universe. Image credit: NASA Ames

Between 2003 and 2005, thanks to its unprecedented sensitivity, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, managed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., created maps of the tell-tale PAH signature across large regions of space, from hot regions of harsh ultraviolet (UV) radiation close to stars, to cold, dark clouds where stars and planets form. By exclusively using their unique collection of authentic PAH spectra, coupled with algorithm-driven, blind-computational analyses, scientists at Ames were able to interpret the cosmic infrared maps with complex organic molecules. They found that PAHs changed significantly in size, electrical charge and structure, to adjust to the different environment at each spot in the map. Carbon is one of the most abundant atoms in space and scientists believe that the spectral changes across these maps trace the molecular evolution of carbon across the universe.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.

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From NASA Chandra: “4C+29.30: Black Hole Powered Jets Plow Into Galaxy”

NASA Chandra

“A giant black hole in the center of the galaxy 4C+29.30 is generating two powerful jets of particles. By combining X-rays (blue), optical (gold), and radio (pink) data, astronomers get a full picture of what is happening. The X-rays reveal superheated gas swirling around the black hole, some of which may eventually be consumed by it. The black hole at the center of 4C+29.30 is thought to be about 100 million times more massive than our Sun.

Composite

X-ray

Optical

Radio

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Siemiginowska et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
Release Date May 15, 2013

This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF’s [NRAO] Very Large Array (pink).

This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.

The X-ray data show a different aspect of this galaxy, tracing the location of hot gas. The bright X-rays in the center of the image mark a pool of million-degree gas around the black hole. Some of this material may eventually be consumed by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could in turn, trigger more output to the radio jet.

See the full article here.

Chandra X-ray Center, Operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

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From ESO: “Orion’s Hidden Fiery Ribbon”

15 May 2013
Contacts

Amelia Stutz
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528 412
Email: stutz@mpia.de

Thomas Stanke
ESO
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6116
Email: tstanke@eso.org

Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

“This dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile.

Clouds of gas and interstellar dust are the raw materials from which stars are made. But these tiny dust grains block our view of what lies within and behind the clouds — at least at visible wavelengths — making it difficult to observe the processes of star formation.

This is why astronomers need to use instruments that are able to see at other wavelengths of light. At submillimetre wavelengths, rather than blocking light, the dust grains shine due to their temperatures of a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. The APEX telescope with its submillimetre-wavelength camera LABOCA, located at an altitude of 5000 metres above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes, is the ideal tool for this kind of observation.

This spectacular new picture shows just a part of a bigger complex called the Orion Molecular Cloud, in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). A rich melting pot of bright nebulae, hot young stars and cold dust clouds, this region is hundreds of light-years across and located about 1350 light-years from us. The submillimetre-wavelength glow arising from the cold dust clouds is seen in orange in this image and is overlaid on a view of the region taken in the more familiar visible light.

A picture of Barnard’s Loop, which is a primary component of the nebula complex. Also seen in the image are the locations of other nebulae in the complex such as M42.

The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42. It is readily visible to the naked eye as the slightly fuzzy middle “star” in the sword of Orion. The Orion Nebula is the brightest part of a huge stellar nursery where new stars are being born, and is the closest site of massive star formation to Earth.

The APEX observations used in this image were led by Thomas Stanke (ESO), Tom Megeath (University of Toledo, USA), and Amelia Stutz (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany). APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO. Operation of APEX at Chajnantor is entrusted to ESO.”

See the full article here.

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THE BASIC TOOLS OF E.S.O.

Paranal Platform The VLT

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La Silla

ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The European Extremely Large Telescope
VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX)

ESO, European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.

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Fromk NASA/ESA Hubble: “Labelled Hubble image of NGC 1073, showing quasars and IXO 5″

“The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). The three star-like objects labelled here, PKS 0241+011, QSO B0240+011 and [VV96] J024333.6+012222, are actually not part of the galaxy. They are not even stars.

Release date: 3 February 2012, 10:00

They are quasars, incredibly bright sources of light caused by matter heating up and falling into supermassive black holes in galaxies literally billions of light-years from us. From our distant perspective, they look like faint stars, but they are in fact some of the brightest objects in the Universe.

See the full article here.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), is a free-standing science center, located on the campus of The Johns Hopkins University and operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) for NASA, conducts Hubble science operations.

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From JPL At Caltech: “Sifting Through the Atmospheres of Far-off Worlds”

May 09, 2013

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

“Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our sun — and more than 2,700 other candidates. What are these exotic planets made of? Unfortunately, you cannot stack them in a jar like marbles and take a closer look. Instead, researchers are coming up with advanced techniques for probing the planets’ makeup.

One breakthrough to come in recent years is direct imaging of exoplanets. Ground-based telescopes have begun taking infrared pictures of the planets posing near their stars in family portraits. But to astronomers, a picture is worth even more than a thousand words if its light can be broken apart into a rainbow of different wavelengths.

Those wishes are coming true as researchers are beginning to install infrared cameras on ground-based telescopes equipped with spectrographs. Spectrographs are instruments that spread an object’s light apart, revealing signatures of molecules. Project 1640, partly funded by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., recently accomplished this goal using the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

‘In just one hour, we were able to get precise composition information about four planets around one overwhelmingly bright star’, said Gautam Vasisht of JPL, co-author of the new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal. ‘The star is a hundred thousand times as bright as the planets, so we’ve developed ways to remove that starlight and isolate the extremely faint light of the planets.’

Along with ground-based infrared imaging, other strategies for combing through the atmospheres of giant planets are being actively pursued as well. For example, NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes monitor planets as they cross in front of their stars, and then disappear behind. NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will use a comparable strategy to study the atmospheres of planets only slightly larger than Earth.”

See the full article here.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although the facility has a Pasadena postal address, it is actually headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge [1], on the northwest border of Pasadena. JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network.

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From NRAO: “Astronomers Discover Surprising Clutch of Hydrogen Clouds Lurking among Our Galactic Neighbors”

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

“In a dark, starless patch of intergalactic space, astronomers have discovered a never-before-seen cluster of hydrogen clouds strewn between two nearby galaxies, Andromeda (M31) and Triangulum (M33). The researchers speculate that these rarefied blobs of gas — each about as massive as a dwarf galaxy — condensed out of a vast and as-yet undetected reservoir of hot, ionized gas, which could have accompanied an otherwise invisible band of dark matter.

Intergalactic clouds between Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies

The astronomers detected these objects using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, W.Va. The results were published in the journal Nature.

‘We have known for some time that many seemingly empty stretches of the Universe contain vast but diffuse patches of hot, ionized hydrogen,’ said Spencer Wolfe of West Virginia University in Morgantown. ‘Earlier observations of the area between M31 and M33 suggested the presence of colder, neutral hydrogen, but we couldn’t see any details to determine if it had a definitive structure or represented a new type of cosmic feature. Now, with high-resolution images from the GBT, we were able to detect discrete concentrations of neutral hydrogen emerging out of what was thought to be a mainly featureless field of gas.’”

See the full article here.

NRAO ALMA

NRAO GBT

NRAO VLA

The NRAO operates a complementary, state-of-the-art suite of radio telescope facilities for use by the scientific community, regardless of institutional or national affiliation: the Very Large Array (VLA), the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)*.

The NRAO is building two new major research facilities in partnership with the international community that will soon open new scientific frontiers: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA). Access to ALMA observing time by the North American astronomical community will be through the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC).

*The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) comprises ten radio telescopes spanning 5,351 miles. It’s the world’s largest, sharpest, dedicated telescope array. With an eye this sharp, you could be in Los Angeles and clearly read a street sign in New York City!

Astronomers use the continent-sized VLBA to zoom in on objects that shine brightly in radio waves, long-wavelength light that’s well below infrared on the spectrum. They observe blazars, quasars, black holes, and stars in every stage of the stellar life cycle. They plot pulsars, exoplanets, and masers, and track asteroids and planets.