From The National Science Foundation: “Were galaxies different in the early universe?”

From The National Science Foundation

3.13.23

Research improves search for cosmic dawn radiation and tests theories of galaxy formation.

Dark Energy Camera Enables Astronomers a Glimpse at the Cosmic Dawn. Credit: The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (国立天文台](JP).

The Milky Way above HERA. HERA sits in a region where radios, cellphones and gas-powered cars are prohibited.
Credit: Dara Storer.

The University of California-Berkeley Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) SARAO SKA in the South African Karoo desert South Africa.

The University of California-Berkeley Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) SARAO SKA in the South African Karoo desert South Africa.

An array of 350 radio telescopes in the Karoo desert of South Africa is getting closer to detecting “cosmic dawn,” the era after the Big Bang when stars first ignited and galaxies began to bloom.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal [below], the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array, or HERA, team reports that it has doubled the sensitivity of the array, which was already the most sensitive radio telescope in the world dedicated to exploring this unique period in the history of the universe.

The HERA collaboration is led by University of California-Berkeley scientists and includes others across North America, Europe and South Africa. The construction of the array is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

While the researchers have yet to detect radio emissions from the end of the cosmic dark ages their results provide clues to the composition of stars and galaxies in the early universe. The data show that the earliest stars which may have formed around 200 million years after the Big Bang contained few other elements than hydrogen and helium.

That’s different than the composition of today’s stars, which have a variety of so-called metals, the astronomical term for elements ranging from lithium to uranium that are heavier than helium. The finding is consistent with the current model of how stars and stellar explosions produced most of the other elements.

“This is moving toward a potentially revolutionary technique in cosmology,” said Joshua Dillon, a scientist at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper.

HERA seeks to detect radiation from the neutral hydrogen that filled the space between early stars and galaxies and determine when that hydrogen became ionized and stopped emitting or absorbing radio waves.

When the radio dishes are fully online and calibrated-likely this fall-the team hopes to construct a 3D map of the bubbles of ionized and neutral hydrogen as they evolved from about 200 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The map could tell us how early stars and galaxies differed from those of today and how the universe as a whole looked in its adolescence.

The fact that the HERA team has not yet detected these bubbles of ionized hydrogen in the cold hydrogen of the cosmic dark age rules out some theories of how stars evolved in the early universe.

“Early galaxies had to have been different than the galaxies we observe today for us not to have seen a signal,” said Aaron Parsons, principal investigator for HERA and a UC Berkeley astronomer. “In particular, their X-ray characteristics had to have changed. Otherwise, we would have detected the signal we’re looking for.”

Additional NSF support for the research came through a number of grants: Illuminating our Early Universe with HERA; HERA: Unveiling the Cosmic Dawn; Data Analysis Techniques for the Epoch of Reionization and Beyond; and XSEDE 2.0: Integrating, Enabling and Enhancing National Cyberinfrastructure with Expanding Community Involvement, which supported XSEDE, Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, providing advanced computational resources. Computations contributing to the discovery were performed on the NSF-supported Bridges-2 system at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, applying services available through the XSEDE project.

Bridges-2 HPE supercomputer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center.

The Astrophysical Journal
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…we are the funding source for approximately 24 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, The National Science Foundation is the major source of federal backing.

We fulfill our mission chiefly by issuing limited-term grants — currently about 12,000 new awards per year, with an average duration of three years — to fund specific research proposals that have been judged the most promising by a rigorous and objective merit-review system. Most of these awards go to individuals or small groups of investigators. Others provide funding for research centers, instruments and facilities that allow scientists, engineers and students to work at the outermost frontiers of knowledge.

The National Science Foundation ‘s goals — discovery, learning, research infrastructure and stewardship — provide an integrated strategy to advance the frontiers of knowledge, cultivate a world-class, broadly inclusive science and engineering workforce and expand the scientific literacy of all citizens, build the nation’s research capability through investments in advanced instrumentation and facilities, and support excellence in science and engineering research and education through a capable and responsive organization. We like to say that The National Science Foundation is “where discoveries begin.”

Many of the discoveries and technological advances have been truly revolutionary. In the past few decades, The National Science Foundation -funded researchers have won some 236 Nobel Prizes as well as other honors too numerous to list. These pioneers have included the scientists or teams that discovered many of the fundamental particles of matter, analyzed the cosmic microwaves left over from the earliest epoch of the universe, developed carbon-14 dating of ancient artifacts, decoded the genetics of viruses, and created an entirely new state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The National Science Foundation also funds equipment that is needed by scientists and engineers but is often too expensive for any one group or researcher to afford. Examples of such major research equipment include giant optical and radio telescopes, Antarctic research sites, high-end computer facilities and ultra-high-speed connections, ships for ocean research, sensitive detectors of very subtle physical phenomena and gravitational wave observatories.

Another essential element in The National Science Foundation ‘s mission is support for science and engineering education, from pre-K through graduate school and beyond. The research we fund is thoroughly integrated with education to help ensure that there will always be plenty of skilled people available to work in new and emerging scientific, engineering and technological fields, and plenty of capable teachers to educate the next generation.

No single factor is more important to the intellectual and economic progress of society, and to the enhanced well-being of its citizens, than the continuous acquisition of new knowledge. The National Science Foundation is proud to be a major part of that process.

Specifically, the Foundation’s organic legislation authorizes us to engage in the following activities:

Initiate and support, through grants and contracts, scientific and engineering research and programs to strengthen scientific and engineering research potential, and education programs at all levels, and appraise the impact of research upon industrial development and the general welfare.

Award graduate fellowships in the sciences and in engineering.

Foster the interchange of scientific information among scientists and engineers in the United States and foreign countries.

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Evaluate the status and needs of the various sciences and engineering and take into consideration the results of this evaluation in correlating our research and educational programs with other federal and non-federal programs.

Provide a central clearinghouse for the collection, interpretation and analysis of data on scientific and technical resources in the United States, and provide a source of information for policy formulation by other federal agencies.

Determine the total amount of federal money received by universities and appropriate organizations for the conduct of scientific and engineering research, including both basic and applied, and construction of facilities where such research is conducted, but excluding development, and report annually thereon to the President and the Congress.

Initiate and support specific scientific and engineering activities in connection with matters relating to international cooperation, national security and the effects of scientific and technological applications upon society.

Initiate and support scientific and engineering research, including applied research, at academic and other nonprofit institutions and, at the direction of the President, support applied research at other organizations.

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As described in our strategic plan, The National Science Foundation is the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences. The National Science Foundation is tasked with keeping the United States at the leading edge of discovery in a wide range of scientific areas, from astronomy to geology to zoology. So, in addition to funding research in the traditional academic areas, the agency also supports “high risk, high pay off” ideas, novel collaborations and numerous projects that may seem like science fiction today, but which the public will take for granted tomorrow. And in every case, we ensure that research is fully integrated with education so that today’s revolutionary work will also be training tomorrow’s top scientists and engineers.

Unlike many other federal agencies, The National Science Foundation does not hire researchers or directly operate our own laboratories or similar facilities. Instead, we support scientists, engineers and educators directly through their own home institutions (typically universities and colleges). Similarly, we fund facilities and equipment such as telescopes, through cooperative agreements with research consortia that have competed successfully for limited-term management contracts.

The National Science Foundation ‘s job is to determine where the frontiers are, identify the leading U.S. pioneers in these fields and provide money and equipment to help them continue. The results can be transformative. For example, years before most people had heard of “nanotechnology,” The National Science Foundation was supporting scientists and engineers who were learning how to detect, record and manipulate activity at the scale of individual atoms — the nanoscale. Today, scientists are adept at moving atoms around to create devices and materials with properties that are often more useful than those found in nature.

Dozens of companies are gearing up to produce nanoscale products. The National Science Foundation is funding the research projects, state-of-the-art facilities and educational opportunities that will teach new skills to the science and engineering students who will make up the nanotechnology workforce of tomorrow.

At the same time, we are looking for the next frontier.

The National Science Foundation ‘s task of identifying and funding work at the frontiers of science and engineering is not a “top-down” process. The National Science Foundation operates from the “bottom up,” keeping close track of research around the United States and the world, maintaining constant contact with the research community to identify ever-moving horizons of inquiry, monitoring which areas are most likely to result in spectacular progress and choosing the most promising people to conduct the research.

The National Science Foundation funds research and education in most fields of science and engineering. We do this through grants and cooperative agreements to more than 2,000 colleges, universities, K-12 school systems, businesses, informal science organizations and other research organizations throughout the U.S. The Foundation considers proposals submitted by organizations on behalf of individuals or groups for support in most fields of research. Interdisciplinary proposals also are eligible for consideration. Awardees are chosen from those who send us proposals asking for a specific amount of support for a specific project.

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From The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope: “3C 297 -Chandra Helps Astronomers Discover a Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy”

From The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope

3.8.23
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Dr. Peter Edmonds
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
617-571-7279
pedmonds@cfa.harvard.edu

Composite

X-ray

Optical (Gemini)

Optical (Hubble)

IR

Radio
___________________________________________________

There is a surprisingly lonely galaxy about 9.2 billion light-years from Earth.

Its surroundings have many features of a galaxy cluster, implying the galaxy has likely pulled in and absorbed its former companion galaxies.

Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory were used for this discovery.

This result may push the limits for how quickly galaxies are expected to grow in the early Universe.

___________________________________________________

This image features a galaxy called 3C 297 that is lonelier than expected after it likely pulled in and absorbed its former companion galaxies, as described in our latest press release. The solo galaxy is located about 9.2 billion light-years from Earth and contains a quasar, a supermassive black hole pulling in gas at the center of the galaxy and driving powerful jets of matter seen in radio waves. This result made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory [Gemini South] may push the limits for how quickly astronomers expect galaxies to grow in the early universe.

NSF NOIRLab NOAO Gemini South telescope Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory(CL) campus near La Serena, Chile, at an altitude of 7200 feet on the summit of Cerro Pachon.

Gemini Observatory Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph [GMOS] on Gemini South

In several regards, 3C 297 has the qualities of a galaxy cluster, a gigantic structure that contains hundreds or even thousands of individual galaxies. X-ray data from Chandra reveal large quantities of gas heated to millions of degrees — a signature feature of a galaxy cluster. Astronomers also found a jet from the quasar — seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array — that has been bent by interacting with its surroundings.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory Karl G Jansky Very Large Array located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes.

Finally, Chandra data shows evidence that the other quasar jet has smashed into the gas around it, creating a “hotspot” of X-rays. These are typically characteristics of a galaxy cluster. Yet, data from the Gemini Observatory show there is only one galaxy in 3C 297. The nineteen galaxies that appear close to 3C 297 in a Gemini image are actually at much different distances.

In the composite image, Chandra data is colored purple, VLA data is red and Gemini data is green. Visible light and infrared data from the Hubble Space Telescope (blue and orange respectively) have also been included.

The National Aeronautics and Space Agency European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Hubble Space Telescope Instrumentation annotated.

The lonely galaxy (3C 297) and the position of its supermassive black are identified the image, along with the black hole’s jets, the X-ray hotspot and the hot gas. The field of view of this image is too small to show any of the 19 galaxies that are not at the same distance as 3C 297.

One proposal for what happened to the missing galaxies is that the gravitational pull of the largest galaxy, combined with the interactions between them, caused the companion galaxies to fall and be assimilated by the alpha. The team considers 3C 297 is most likely a “fossil group” instead of a galaxy cluster, a stage of galactic evolution where one galaxy is pulling in and merging with others. If that is the case, 3C 297 represents the most distant fossil group ever found.

The authors cannot rule out the presence of dwarf galaxies around 3C 297, but their presence would still not explain the lack of larger galaxies like the Milky Way. Nearby examples are Messier 87 in the Virgo Cluster, which has had large galactic companions for billions of years. However, 3C 297 will spend billions of years essentially alone.

The new study was published in the January 2023 issue of The Astrophysical Journal [below]

Earlier Chandra observations lasting only three hours showed hints of the hot gas seen in the new study, as reported by co-author Chiara Stuardi in a paper published in the April 2018 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series below]. Much deeper Chandra observations, however, were required to confirm it. The Chandra observations of 3C 297 were taken over a total time of 2.5 days in April and August of 2021 and 2022.

Quick Look: Chandra Helps Astronomers Discover a Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy.

The Astrophysical Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 2018
See the full article here .

See the Chandra press release here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
In 1976 the Chandra X-ray Observatory (called AXAF at the time) was proposed to National Aeronautics and Space Administration by Riccardo Giacconi and Harvey Tananbaum. Preliminary work began the following year at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In the meantime, in 1978, NASA launched the first imaging X-ray telescope, Einstein (HEAO-2), into orbit. Work continued on the AXAF project throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, to reduce costs, the spacecraft was redesigned. Four of the twelve planned mirrors were eliminated, as were two of the six scientific instruments. AXAF’s planned orbit was changed to an elliptical one, reaching one third of the way to the Moon’s at its farthest point. This eliminated the possibility of improvement or repair by the space shuttle but put the observatory above the Earth’s radiation belts for most of its orbit. AXAF was assembled and tested by TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems) in Redondo Beach, California.

AXAF was renamed Chandra as part of a contest held by NASA in 1998, which drew more than 6,000 submissions worldwide. The contest winners, Jatila van der Veen and Tyrel Johnson (then a high school teacher and high school student, respectively), suggested the name in honor of Nobel Prize–winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He is known for his work in determining the maximum mass of white dwarf stars, leading to greater understanding of high energy astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars and black holes. Fittingly, the name Chandra means “moon” in Sanskrit.

Originally scheduled to be launched in December 1998, the spacecraft was delayed several months, eventually being launched on July 23, 1999, at 04:31 UTC by Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-93. Chandra was deployed from Columbia at 11:47 UTC. The Inertial Upper Stage’s first stage motor ignited at 12:48 UTC, and after burning for 125 seconds and separating, the second stage ignited at 12:51 UTC and burned for 117 seconds. At 22,753 kilograms (50,162 lb), it was the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle, a consequence of the two-stage Inertial Upper Stage booster rocket system needed to transport the spacecraft to its high orbit.

Chandra has been returning data since the month after it launched. It is operated by the SAO at the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with assistance from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northrop Grumman Space Technology. The ACIS CCDs suffered particle damage during early radiation belt passages. To prevent further damage, the instrument is now removed from the telescope’s focal plane during passages.

Although Chandra was initially given an expected lifetime of 5 years, on September 4, 2001, NASA extended its lifetime to 10 years “based on the observatory’s outstanding results.” Physically Chandra could last much longer. A 2004 study performed at the Chandra X-ray Center indicated that the observatory could last at least 15 years.

In July 2008, the International X-ray Observatory, a joint project between European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU), NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) (国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構], was proposed as the next major X-ray observatory but was later cancelled. ESA later resurrected a downsized version of the project as the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), with a proposed launch in 2028.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU) Athena spacecraft depiction

On October 10, 2018, Chandra entered safe mode operations, due to a gyroscope glitch. NASA reported that all science instruments were safe. Within days, the 3-second error in data from one gyro was understood, and plans were made to return Chandra to full service. The gyroscope that experienced the glitch was placed in reserve and is otherwise healthy.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [NASA/ESA Hubble, NASA Chandra, NASA Spitzer, and associated programs.] NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

From The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE): “The dance of supermassive black holes”

From The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE)

2.23.23

Contacts
Dr. Stefanie Komossa
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn
+49 228 525-386
skomossa@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Dr. Alex Kraus
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn
+49 2257 301-101
akraus@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Prof. Dr. Dirk Grupe
+1 859 572-6549
Northern Kentucky University
gruped1@nku.edu

Dr. Norbert Junkes
Press and Public Outreach
MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn
+49 228 525-399
njunkes@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Large-scale observational campaign provides new insights into an assumed black hole binary at the centre of the active galaxy OJ 287. A long-term study with data from four telescopes, ranging from radio to high energy frequencies, has penetrated to the core of the much-discussed active galaxy OJ 287, revealing further details about its interior. The results of the international team, led by Stefanie Komossa of the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy, strengthen the evidence for a binary black hole system and place the primary black hole back on the scale.

The left panel shows a deep ultraviolet image, centered on OJ 287. The image was taken with the spaceborne Swift-Telescope.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Neil Gehrels Swift X-ray, and UV/Visible light Observatory.

The source of the ultraviolet light is the nucleus of the active galaxy OJ 287, which cannot be further resolved with this telescope. The right panel depicts an artist’s view of the nucleus, including the disk of matter, the jet, and the assumed pair of black holes. The secondary black hole is orbiting the more massive one. © S. Komossa et al.; NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Blazars are a special class of active galaxies characterized by high activity and extreme luminosity. The driving engines of these galaxies are black holes hidden inside their cores, millions to billions of times heavier than our Sun. Through the course of the history of the universe, these engines were fueled especially when galaxies collided. The subsequent merger of the galaxies created supermassive binary black holes. The study of such black-hole pairs reveals a lot about the evolution of galaxies and the growth of black holes.

Black hole on the scale

OJ 287 is one of the best candidates to host a compact supermassive binary black hole. One indication of this is the exceptional bursts of radiation produced by processes at the centre of the galaxy, which repeat every 11 to 12 years. Strictly speaking, each outburst consists of two peaks separated by roughly one year. These repeating outbursts are so remarkable that several different binary models have been proposed and discussed in the literature to explain them. The team led by Stefanie Komossa at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has now revised the previously favored model by carrying out an unprecedented and systematic observational campaign. In the process, the researchers have also directly determined the mass of the primary black hole for the first time. At 100 million solar masses, it is probably about a hundred times smaller than previously thought. The new estimate of the black hole mass also seems to explain the entire history of OJ 287’s radiation outbursts, which have now been mapped in great detail.

Unveiling the invisible

The galaxy OJ 287 is too distant for telescopes to resolve the compact nucleus around the suspected black holes. However, since this region dominates the brightness of the whole galaxy, the radiation emerging from the core is both easily detectable on Earth and allows astronomers to reconstruct, with some limitations, the processes hidden inside the bright core. To do this, it helps to know the underlying processes. Matter from a disk surrounding the black hole that drifts inward loses gravitational energy in the form of optical and ultraviolet radiation. A jet launched from the surroundings of the central engine accelerates particles outwards. This often highly relativistic stream of matter emits intense radiation ranging from the radio to the X-rays and gamma-rays.

Two radio telescopes, the 100-metre Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany and the Submillimetre-Array in Hawaii, and two satellite observatories were used for the observations. Among the latter, Fermi covers gamma-ray frequencies, while the Neil-Gehrels-Swift Observatory [above] observes optical, UV and X-ray frequencies.

The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy[MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE)Effelsberg Radio Telescope- a radio telescope in the Ahr Hills (part of the Eifel) in Bad Münstereifel(DE).

CFA Harvard Smithsonian Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i, Altitude 4205 m (13796 ft).

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Fermi Gamma-Ray Large Area Telescope.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope.

“OJ 287 is an excellent laboratory for studying the physical processes that reign in one of the most extreme astrophysical environments: disks and jets of matter in the immediate vicinity of one or two supermassive black holes”, says Stefanie Komossa from the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy, the leading author of the two studies presented here. “Therefore, we initiated the project Momo („Multiwavelength Observations and Modelling of OJ 287“). It consists of high-cadence observations of OJ 287 at more than 14 frequencies from the radio to the high energy regime lasting for years, plus dedicated follow-ups at multiple ground- and space-based facilities when the blazar is found at exceptional states.”

The outbursts of OJ 287 can be explained by the model of a binary black hole system, in particular by the motion of the second, lower-mass black hole orbiting the primary one. On its inclined orbit, it disturbs either the jet or the disk of matter, thus causing OJ 287’s periodic bursts. Measurements with the 100-metre Effelsberg radio telescope attribute the most recent burst directly to the jet. It is like looking into a glaring spotlight that outshines everything behind it.

Strong evidence for two supermassive black holes in the core

The state-of-the-art model describing the processes in the centre of OJ 287 assumed a primary black hole ten billion times heavier than the Sun. According to this model, the next outburst would have been due in October 2022. The actual data did not confirm this prediction. Instead, thanks to the dense coverage of the Momo campaign, the astronomers discovered this outburst much earlier, between 2016 and 2017. The previously favored model was therefore falsified. The researchers then reassessed the mass of the primary black hole. It turns out to be a hundred times lighter than previously thought. As a result, the orbit of the secondary black hole around the primary black hole should wobble much less. This behavior has direct implications for the predicted outbursts, which are now consistent with both historical and recent measurements. “This result is very important, as the mass is a key parameter in the models that study the evolution of this binary system: How far are the black holes separated, how quickly will they merge, how strong is their gravitational wave signal?” says Dirk Grupe of the Northern Kentucky University, a co-author of both studies.

Gravitational waves and a photograph?

The Momo results make the authors optimistic that future space-based observatories will be able to detect gravitational waves from this or similar binary systems. It may even be possible to spatially resolve the two black holes in OJ 287 with a large network of radio telescopes, such as the Event Horizon Telescope known from the media or the Square Kilometre Array still under construction. This would be the first direct detection of a close system of two supermassive black holes in the centre of a galaxy.

MNRAS
The Astrophysical Journal

Fig. 1.

Multifrequency radio light curves of OJ 287 between 2015 December and 2022 June obtained with the Effelsberg telescope in the course of the MOMO program. Note that some receivers and/or frequencies have slightly changed in the course of the monitoring. See Table 1 for details in the science paper.

Fig. 2.

SMA radio light curve of OJ 287 between 2015 October and 2022
June (filled circles: 1.3 mm band, open green circles: 1.1 mm band, open blue
circles: 870 μm band).

For further images see the science paper.

Astronomical Notes
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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MPIFR campus

Effelsberg Radio Telescope- a radio telescope in the Ahr Hills (part of the Eifel) in Bad Münstereifel(DE)

The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie] (DE) is located in Bonn, Germany. It is one of 80 institutes in the MPG Society.

By combining the already existing radio astronomy faculty of the University of Bonn led by Otto Hachenberg with the new MPG institute the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy was formed. In 1972 the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg was opened. The institute building was enlarged in 1983 and 2002.

The institute was founded in 1966 by the MPG Society as the “MPG Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) (DE)”.

The foundation of the institute was closely linked to plans in the German astronomical community to construct a competitive large radio telescope in (then) West Germany. In 1964, Professors Friedrich Becker, Wolfgang Priester and Otto Hachenberg of the Astronomische Institute der Universität Bonn submitted a proposal to the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk for the construction of a large fully steerable radio telescope.

In the same year the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk approved the funding of the telescope project but with the condition that an organization should be found, which would guarantee the operations. It was clear that the operation of such a large instrument was well beyond the possibilities of a single university institute.

Already in 1965 the MPG Society decided in principle to found the MPG Institut für Radioastronomie. Eventually, after a series of discussions, the institute was officially founded in 1966.

MPG Society for the Advancement of Science [MPG Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.] is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and renamed the Max Planck Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. The society is funded by the federal and state governments of Germany as well as other sources.

According to its primary goal, the MPG Society supports fundamental research in the natural, life and social sciences, the arts and humanities in its 83 (as of January 2014) MPG Institutes. The society has a total staff of approximately 17,000 permanent employees, including 5,470 scientists, plus around 4,600 non-tenured scientists and guests. Society budget for 2015 was about €1.7 billion.

The MPG Institutes focus on excellence in research. The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization, with 33 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists, and is generally regarded as the foremost basic research organization in Europe and the world. In 2013, the Nature Publishing Index placed the MPG institutes fifth worldwide in terms of research published in Nature journals (after Harvard University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and The National Institutes of Health). In terms of total research volume (unweighted by citations or impact), the Max Planck Society is only outranked by The Chinese Academy of Sciences [中国科学院](CN), The Russian Academy of Sciences [Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к](RU) and Harvard University. The Thomson Reuters-Science Watch website placed the MPG Society as the second leading research organization worldwide following Harvard University, in terms of the impact of the produced research over science fields.

The MPG Society and its predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm Society hosted several renowned scientists in their fields, including Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein.

History

The organization was established in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, or Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG), a non-governmental research organization named for the then German emperor. The KWG was one of the world’s leading research organizations; its board of directors included scientists like Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, and Fritz Haber. In 1946, Otto Hahn assumed the position of President of KWG, and in 1948, the society was renamed the Max Planck Society (MPG) after its former President (1930–37) Max Planck, who died in 1947.

The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization. In 2006, the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings of non-university research institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the MPG Society as No.1 in the world for science research, and No.3 in technology research (behind AT&T Corporation and The DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The domain mpg.de attracted at least 1.7 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.

MPG Institutes and research groups

The MPG Society consists of over 80 research institutes. In addition, the society funds a number of Max Planck Research Groups (MPRG) and International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS). The purpose of establishing independent research groups at various universities is to strengthen the required networking between universities and institutes of the Max Planck Society.
The research units are primarily located across Europe with a few in South Korea and the U.S. In 2007, the Society established its first non-European centre, with an institute on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University (US) focusing on neuroscience.
The MPG Institutes operate independently from, though in close cooperation with, the universities, and focus on innovative research which does not fit into the university structure due to their interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature or which require resources that cannot be met by the state universities.

Internally, MPG Institutes are organized into research departments headed by directors such that each MPI has several directors, a position roughly comparable to anything from full professor to department head at a university. Other core members include Junior and Senior Research Fellows.

In addition, there are several associated institutes:
International Max Planck Research Schools
Together with the Association of Universities and other Education Institutions in Germany, the Max Planck Society established numerous International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS) to promote junior scientists:

• Cologne Graduate School of Ageing Research, Cologne
• International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems, at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems located in Tübingen and Stuttgart
• International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World (Uncertainty School), at the Max Planck Institutes for Economics, for Human Development, and/or Research on Collective Goods
• International Max Planck Research School for Analysis, Design and Optimization in Chemical and Biochemical Process Engineering, Magdeburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics, Heidelberg at the MPI for Astronomy
• International Max Planck Research School for Astrophysics, Garching at the MPI for Astrophysics
• International Max Planck Research School for Complex Surfaces in Material Sciences, Berlin
• International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science, Saarbrücken
• International Max Planck Research School for Earth System Modeling, Hamburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Elementary Particle Physics, Munich, at the MPI for Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology, Marburg at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology
• International Max Planck Research School for Evolutionary Biology, Plön at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology
• International Max Planck Research School “From Molecules to Organisms”, Tübingen at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
• International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Jena at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
• International Max Planck Research School on Gravitational Wave Astronomy, Hannover and Potsdam MPI for Gravitational Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Heart and Lung Research, Bad Nauheim at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research
• International Max Planck Research School for Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
• International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Nijmegen
• International Max Planck Research School for Neurosciences, Göttingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, Tübingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Marine Microbiology (MarMic), joint program of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, the University of Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, and the Jacobs University Bremen
• International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs, Hamburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Freiburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences, Munich
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology, Göttingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Cell Biology and Bioengineering, Dresden
• International Max Planck Research School Molecular Biomedicine, program combined with the ‘Graduate Programm Cell Dynamics And Disease’ at the University of Münster and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine
• International Max Planck Research School on Multiscale Bio-Systems, Potsdam
• International Max Planck Research School for Organismal Biology, at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
• International Max Planck Research School on Reactive Structure Analysis for Chemical Reactions (IMPRS RECHARGE), Mülheim an der Ruhr, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion
• International Max Planck Research School for Science and Technology of Nano-Systems, Halle at Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Solar System Science at the University of Göttingen hosted by MPI for Solar System Research
• International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Bonn, at the MPI for Radio Astronomy (formerly the International Max Planck Research School for Radio and Infrared Astronomy)
• International Max Planck Research School for the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, Cologne
• International Max Planck Research School for Surface and Interface Engineering in Advanced Materials, Düsseldorf at Max Planck Institute for Iron Research GmbH
• International Max Planck Research School for Ultrafast Imaging and Structural Dynamics, Hamburg

Max Planck Schools

• Max Planck School of Cognition
• Max Planck School Matter to Life
• Max Planck School of Photonics

Max Planck Center

• The Max Planck Centre for Attosecond Science (MPC-AS), POSTECH Pohang
• The Max Planck POSTECH Center for Complex Phase Materials, POSTECH Pohang

Max Planck Institutes

Among others:
• Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior – caesar, Bonn
• Max Planck Institute for Aeronomics in Katlenburg-Lindau was renamed to Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in 2004;
• Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen was closed in 2005;
• Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology in Ladenburg b. Heidelberg was closed in 2003;
• Max Planck Institute for Economics in Jena was renamed to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in 2014;
• Max Planck Institute for Ionospheric Research in Katlenburg-Lindau was renamed to Max Planck Institute for Aeronomics in 1958;
• Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Stuttgart
• Max Planck Institute of Oceanic Biology in Wilhelmshaven was renamed to Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology in 1968 and moved to Ladenburg 1977;
• Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich merged into the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in 2004;
• Max Planck Institute for Protein and Leather Research in Regensburg moved to Munich 1957 and was united with the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in 1977;
• Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen was renamed as Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in 1985;
• Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg (from 1970 until 1981 (closed)) directed by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Jürgen Habermas.
• Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology
• Max Planck Institute of Experimental Endocrinology
• Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Social Law
• Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics
• Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding
• Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing

From The University of Manchester (UK) Via “phys.org” : “Astronomers measure the heartbeat of spinning stars”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

Via

“phys.org”

2.23.23

𝑃-𝑃¤ diagram showing pulsars with detected drifting subpulses with stars, 𝑃3-only pulsars with diamonds, and the other pulsars in the sample with the dots.

An international team of scientist have used the MeerKAT radio telescope to observe the pulsing heartbeat of the universe as neutron stars are born and form swirling lightning storms which last for millions of years.

SKA SARAO Meerkat [SKA-Mid] Telescope (SA), 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, SA.

Radio pulsars are spinning neutron stars from which we can observe flashes of radio waves in the manner of light pulses from a lighthouse. With masses of about one and a half times the mass of the sun, and sizes of only about 25 km, neutron stars are the densest stars known. They rotate extremely fast, typically once every thousandth of a second to once every ten seconds, only gradually slowing down as they age.

Now, a team of collaborative astronomers have published the largest pulsar survey ever in the MNRAS [below].

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discovered pulsars with radio astronomy. Jocelyn Bell at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Cambridge (UK), taken for the Daily Herald newspaper in 1968. Denied the Nobel.

Neutron stars are also the strongest magnets in the universe, on average a million times stronger than the strongest magnet on Earth. Such extreme properties present an opportunity to test the laws of physics with exceptionally high accuracy. Even 60 years after their discovery, fundamental questions about the nature of these exotic objects remain.

No two pulsars are the same, and headway in these exciting areas of physics requires sensitive observations of as many pulsars as possible. The “Thousand Pulsar Array” (TPA) project is an international collaboration aimed at pursuing these aims by exploiting the unprecedented sensitivity of the MeerKAT radio telescope. This consists of 64 antennas in the Karoo desert in South Africa, and is a stepping stone towards the Square Kilometer Array, in which the U.K. has leadership.

The findings are published in two parts, one of which is led by researchers at The University of Manchester, which details the findings of the study of over one million individual flashes recorded. The sequence of flashes can be visualized as a train of pulses.

Dr. Patrick Weltevrede of The University of Manchester said, “Observing a pulsar is like checking the pulse of a pulsar, revealing the particularities of its ‘heartbeat.’ Each individual pulse is different in shape and strength.”

For some pulsars ordered patterns of diagonal stripes appear when visualized. Dr. Xiaoxi Song, Ph.D. student at The University of Manchester explains, “The superb quality of the TPA data and our sophisticated analysis allowed us to reveal these patterns for many pulsars for the first time. These patterns can be explained by the lightning storms swirling around the star. The findings point to something fundamental about how pulsars operate.”

After the pulsar is born, the lightning storms swirl around the star fast and chaotically. After a few million years, the lightning storms settle down and the patterns become slower and steadier. This turns out to be the opposite of what models predict. Eventually, after a few billion years the lightning will stop altogether, and pulsars will no longer be detectable.

The MeerKAT team recently received the prestigious Group Award of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the TPA project has now reached an extraordinary milestone: detailed observations of more than 1,200 pulsars, representing more than a third of the known pulsars.

In accompanying work, led by researchers at the University of Oxford, the statistical properties of the pulse shapes are presented. Dr. Bettina Posselt explains, “We find that the most important property governing the radio emission of a pulsar is its so-called spin-down power. It quantifies the energy set free by a neutron star each second as its rotation slows down. Some of this spin-down power is used to produce the observed radio waves.”

Models predict that the ionized gas surrounding the star continuously discharges in what can be compared to lightning storms, producing the radio pulses. The new data indicate that the spin-down power influences how high above the neutron star surface the radio emission takes place and how much energy the charged particles are endowed with. Since there is evidence that the spin-down power decreases with age, and the 1,200 pulsars exhibit large variety in spin-down power, the TPA data are ideal to study the aging of neutron stars.

The new data shows that even pulsars with the least spin-down power emit intense radio emission and can be detected up to large distances. This result suggests there may be a larger population of pulsars yet to be discovered than previously expected.

The TPA data from both projects are now publicly available. They enable the international community to pursue further studies both on the properties of these pulsars and those of the intervening interstellar space.

MNRAS

MNRAS
For further illustrations see this science paper.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research – ICRAR (AU) And From CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU): “Polarized Shockwaves shake the Universe’s Cosmic Web”

From The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research – ICRAR (AU)

And

From CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU)

2.16.23
ICRAR
Sharon Segler
Manager Strategic Engagement and Communications
0409 202 255
Sharon.segler@icrar.org

CSIRO
Rachel Rayner
Communications Advisor
0499 781 216
rachel.rayner@csiro.au

ICRAR researchers discover tantalizing evidence of magnetic fields in the universe’s largest cosmic structures.

The cosmic web is how the universe looks at its largest scale – an interweaving web of filaments and clusters full of gases and galaxies which wind around cosmic voids millions of lightyears across.

Cosmic web Millenium Simulation via The MPG Institute for Astrophysics [MPG Institut für Astrophysik](DE).

This universe-spanning web was predicted by astrophysicists in the 1960s, with computer modelling giving us a glimpse of how this vast network truly looked in the 1980s.

Over the course of the past few decades, we’ve been able to map the Cosmic Web through observation, bringing with it the possibility of answering some of astronomy’s biggest questions.

An area of particular interest is how magnetic fields behave on a cosmic scale, and what role they play in both galactic and cosmic structure formation.

New research published today in Science Advances [below] and led by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in partnership with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, is helping us to further understand these cosmic magnetic fields.

Dr Tessa Vernstrom from The University of Western Australia’s (UWA) node of ICRAR, is the lead author of the research and describes magnetism as a fundamental force in nature.

“Magnetic fields pervade the universe – from planets and stars to the largest spaces in-between galaxies.”

“However, many aspects of cosmic magnetism are not yet fully understood, especially at the scales seen in the cosmic web.”

“When matter merges in the universe, it produces a shockwave which accelerates particles, amplifying these intergalactic magnetic fields,” said Dr Vernstrom.

A composite image showing the magnetic fields of the cosmic web, featuring a pull out of how radio data was stacked. (Credit: Vernstrom et al. 2023)

Her research has recorded radio emissions coming from the cosmic web – the first observational evidence of strong shockwaves.

This phenomenon had previously only been observed in the universe’s largest galaxy clusters and was predicted to be the ‘signature’ of matter collisions throughout the cosmic web.

“These shockwaves give off radio emissions which should result in the cosmic web ‘glowing’ in the radio spectrum, but it had never really been conclusively detected due to how faint the signals are.”

Dr Vernstrom’s team began searching for the cosmic web’s ‘radio glow’ in 2020 and initially found signals which could be attributed to these cosmic waves.

However, as these initial signals could have included emissions from galaxies and celestial objects other than the shockwaves, Vernstrom opted for a different signal type with less background ‘noise’ – polarized radio light.

“As very few sources emit polarized radio light, our search was less prone to contamination and we have been able to provide much stronger evidence that we are seeing emissions from the shockwaves in the largest structures in the universe, which helps to confirm our models for the growth of this large-scale structure.”

The research utilized data and all-sky radio maps from the Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey, the Planck Legacy Archive, the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array, and the Murchison Widefield Array [below], stacking the data over the known clusters and filaments in the cosmic web.

The University of New Mexico Long Wavelength Array at Caltech Owens Valley Observatory, located in high-desert terrain east of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft).

The stacking method helps to strengthen the faint signal above the image noise, which was then compared to state-of-the-art cosmological simulations generated through the Enzo Project.

A single frame from the simulation during the final “time step” displaying different layers. The yellow shows the temperature and gas density of the cosmic web. The red shows the radio emission from the shocks and the blue lines show the magnetic field lines. (Credit: Vazza F; ENZO; Piz-Daint CSCS (Lugano))

These simulations are the first of their kind to include predictions of the polarized radio light from the cosmic shockwaves observed as part of this research.

Our understanding of these magnetic fields could be used to expand and refine our theories on how the universe grows and has the potential to help us solve the mystery of the origins of cosmic magnetism.

Science Advances

Fig. 1. Stacked images and residual images from the Stokes I total intensity maps.

The first column (A to D) is the stacked images, whereas the second column (E to H) is the residual after model subtraction. Top to bottom: The rows are connected pairs of 1.4 GHz, connected pairs of 30 GHz, unconnected pairs of 1.4 GHz, and unconnected pairs of 30 GHz. The boxes show the area used to measure the average signals, with the yellow being from the low-frequency work and the red boxes being sized to the total intensity signal in this work. (I) Spectrum from the four previously detected low-frequency data points (27) and the two high-frequency points for the detected intercluster emission, with the red points and line measured from inside the yellow box of (E) and (F) and the blue points measured from the smaller red boxes.

See the science paper for further illustrations.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU ), is Australia’s national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.

CSIRO works with leading organizations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO maintains more than 50 sites across Australia and in France, Chile and the United States, employing about 5,500 people.

Federally funded scientific research began in Australia 104 years ago. The Advisory Council of Science and Industry was established in 1916 but was hampered by insufficient available finance. In 1926 the research effort was reinvigorated by establishment of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which strengthened national science leadership and increased research funding. CSIR grew rapidly and achieved significant early successes. In 1949 further legislated changes included renaming the organization as CSIRO.

Notable developments by CSIRO have included the invention of atomic absorption spectroscopy; essential components of Wi-Fi technology; development of the first commercially successful polymer banknote; the invention of the insect repellent in Aerogard and the introduction of a series of biological controls into Australia, such as the introduction of myxomatosis and rabbit calicivirus for the control of rabbit populations.

Research and focus areas

Research Business Units

As at 2019, CSIRO’s research areas are identified as “Impact science” and organized into the following Business Units:

Agriculture and Food
Health and Biosecurity
Data 61
Energy
Land and Water
Manufacturing
Mineral Resources
Oceans and Atmosphere

National Facilities
CSIRO manages national research facilities and scientific infrastructure on behalf of the nation to assist with the delivery of research. The national facilities and specialized laboratories are available to both international and Australian users from industry and research. As at 2019, the following National Facilities are listed:

Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL)
Australia Telescope National Facility – radio telescopes included in the Facility include the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Parkes Observatory, Mopra Radio Telescope Observatory and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU) CSIRO R/V Investigator.

UK Space NovaSAR-1 satellite (UK) synthetic aperture radar satellite.

CSIRO Pawsey Supercomputing Centre AU)

Magnus Cray XC40 supercomputer at Pawsey Supercomputer Centre Perth Australia.

Galaxy Cray XC30 Series Supercomputer at at Pawsey Supercomputer Centre Perth Australia.

Pausey Supercomputer CSIRO Zeus SGI Linux cluster.

Pawsey Cray EX Supercomputer – Setonix

Others not shown

Australia Telescope National Facility – radio telescopes included in the Facility include the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Parkes Observatory, Mopra Radio Telescope Observatory and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder.

CSIRO Australia Compact Array (AU), six radio telescopes at the Paul Wild Observatory, is an array of six 22-m antennas located about twenty five kilometres (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in Australia.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU) Parkes Observatory [Murriyang, the traditional Indigenous name], located 20 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, 414.80m above sea level.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU) Mopra Radio Telescope

NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, AU, Deep Space Network. Credit: NASA.

CSIRO Canberra campus.

ESA DSA 1, hosts a 35-metre deep-space antenna with transmission and reception in both S- and X-band and is located 140 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia, near the town of New Norcia.

Enhancing Australia’s position in the international SKA program by contributing to the development process for the SKA in scientific, technological and operational areas.
Promoting scientific, technical, commercial and educational opportunities through public outreach, educational material, training students and collaborative developments with national and international educational organisations.
Establishing and maintaining a pool of emerging and top-level scientists and technologists in the disciplines related to radio astronomy through appointments and training.
Making world-class contributions to SKA science, with emphasis on the signature science themes associated with surveys for neutral hydrogen and variable (transient) radio sources.
Making world-class contributions to SKA capability with respect to developments in the areas of Data Intensive Science and support for the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.

SKA

SKA- Square Kilometer Array.

SKA Murchison Widefield Array (AU), Boolardy station in outback Western Australia, at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

SKA ASKAP Pathfinder Radio Telescope at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

SKA Square Kilometre Array low frequency at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

Testing EDGES at MIT Haystack Observatory

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory EDGES telescope in a radio quiet zone the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

The ICRAR(AU) is an equal joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with funding support from the State Government of Western Australia. The Centre’s headquarters are located at UWA, with research nodes at both UWA and the Curtin Institute for Radio Astronomy (CIRA).

ICRAR(AU) has strong support from the government of Australia and is working closely with industry and the astronomy community, including CSIRO(AU) and the Australian Telescope National Facility.

Playing a key role in the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, the world’s biggest ground-based telescope array.

Attracting some of the world’s leading researchers in radio astronomy, who will also contribute to national and international scientific and technical programs for SKA and ASKAP.

From SKA SARAO – South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SA): “MeerKAT discovers a distant galaxy has very large hydrogen atoms”

From SKA SARAO – South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SA)

2.15.23

Kimberly Emig
kemig@nrao.edu,

Neeraj Gupta
ngupta@iucaa.in

Gravitational lensing. Credit: ESA + K. Emig.

While using the MeerKAT radio telescope to study a distant galaxy towards PKS 1830-211, scientists discovered something unexpected: gas clouds made up of some of the largest hydrogen atoms in the universe, Rydberg atoms. It is the first time scientists observed these hydrogen atoms in a distant galaxy. What’s more, they believe the large atoms are spread throughout the galaxy in ionized interstellar gas clouds. The discovery could help researchers to understand the nature and evolution of interstellar gas in galaxies and how Rydberg atoms are formed in space.

A Rydberg atom is an excited atom with one or more electrons that have a very high principal quantum number.

Figure 1: Electron orbital of a Rydberg atom with n=12. Colors show the quantum phase of the highly excited electron.
Credit: Berndthaller

An article reporting this discovery was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal [below].

Located in the constellation Sagittarius PKS1830-211 is a very distant quasar 11.1 billion light years away (redshift 2.5). However, it is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky since the high-power jet from its super massive black hole is pointed directly at Earth. PKS 1830-211 is a hot spot for studying astrochemistry in the universe. The light from PKS 1830-211 passes through a foreground galaxy 7.3 billion light years distant (redshift 0.89) on its way to Earth, illuminating molecular chemistry in the spiral arms of the foreground galaxy. This rare alignment has allowed the large Hydrogen atoms to be observed.

A Rydberg atom refers to an atom with an electron in a high energy state. Radio light amplifies the Rydberg atoms. Under just the right conditions, the atoms become naturally occurring lasers, and light becomes brighter at the radio wavelengths emitted by the atoms. Finding just the right conditions for this to occur in distant galaxies has been a long standing mystery. But next-generation radio telescopes observing the Universe at cm to meter wavelengths are making it possible for the first time.

The South African MeerKAT radio telescope is currently the most sensitive radio telescope observing at these wavelengths. Large surveys that cover the sky using wide bandwidth receivers have high enough precision to look for spectral fingerprints from many wavelengths simultaneously. The MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS; https://mals.iucaa.in/) is one such survey which observes at 18 to 52 cm wavelengths. Because MALS is targeting the brightest radio sources in the sky, it is currently the most sensitive survey for detecting absorption signatures from hydrogen atoms (in the ground state) and molecules like OH – and unexpectedly, also the large Rydberg atoms.

Using the MALS survey, scientists found 44 fingerprints from Rydberg atoms. “We used hydrogen Rydberg atoms to study the physical and dynamic structures in a galaxy 7.3 billion light years away towards PKS 1830-211. The Rydberg atoms could be coming from large clouds of gas that are ionized by the radiation from young massive stars. These atoms tell us that interstellar gas in this galaxy is much more dense than what is found in the Milky Way,” says Kimberly Emig, a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) of USA and lead author of the paper.

Scientists hope to discover more of these oddball atoms. Emig explains, “We were excited to discover these high-excitation hydrogen atoms in such a distant galaxy. It gives a new way to observe our Universe and possibly study the evolution of interstellar gas in galaxies over cosmic time. They could also help us to understand how interstellar gas drives and inhibits the activity of super massive black holes.”

PKS 1830-211 was the first target of MALS. Its observations helped to characterize the performance of the new MeerKAT telescope. The large volumes of MALS data (1.6 petabytes) are processed using an automated pipeline utilizing the task and tools based on the Common Astronomy Software Applications (CASA) package of NRAO, at a dedicated high performance computing facility setup at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), India.

The MALS survey primarily uses a transition of atomic hydrogen at 21 cm wavelengths and transitions from the hydroxyl (OH) molecule at 18 cm wavelengths in order to determine the occurrence of atomic and molecular gas in and around galaxies. “Only a small number of these transitions have been detected in distant galaxies so far due to technical limitations. If we detect a large number (several 100) of these transitions then we can assess the physical conditions of cold gas which serves as fuel for star formation in galaxies. Studying ionized gas through hydrogen Rydberg atoms is highly complementary to studying interstellar gas in its atomic and molecular phases and would help us to explain the changes in the properties of galaxies at different ages of the Universe,” explains Neeraj Gupta, astronomer at IUCAA and lead investigator of the MALS project.

Making this discovery has been a team effort. The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory operates the MeerKAT telescope. An international collaboration from India, Europe, South Africa, North America, and Australia carries out the MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey. Data from the observations is processed through tools of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Thoughtworks Technologies India Pvt Ltd, among others.

The Astrophysical Journal
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), a facility of the National Research Foundation, is responsible for managing all radio astronomy initiatives and facilities in South Africa, including the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in the Karoo, and the Geodesy and VLBI activities at the HartRAO facility. SARAO also coordinates The African Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (AVN) for the eight SKA partner countries in Africa, as well as South Africa’s contribution to the infrastructure and engineering planning for the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope. To maximize the return on South Africa’s investment in radio astronomy, SARAO is managing programmes to create capacity in radio astronomy science and engineering research, and the technical capacity required to support site operations.

SKA SARAO Meerkat Telescope (SA), 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, SA.

SKA Hera at SKA in the South African Karoo desert South Africa.

HartRAO in Johannesburg, South Africa

About SKA

The Square Kilometre Array (AU) will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The total collecting area will be approximately one square kilometre giving 50 times the sensitivity, and 10 000 times the survey speed, of the best current-day telescopes. The SKA will be built in Southern Africa and in Australia. Thousands of receptors will extend to distances of 3 000 km from the central regions. The SKA will address fundamental unanswered questions about our Universe including how the first stars and galaxies formed after the Big Bang, how dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the Universe, the role of magnetism in the cosmos, the nature of gravity, and the search for life beyond Earth. Construction of phase one of the SKA is scheduled to start in 2016. The SKA Organization, with its headquarters at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Manchester, UK, was established in December 2011 as a not-for-profit company in order to formalize relationships between the international partners and centralize the leadership of the project.

SKA ASKAP Pathfinder Radio Telescope at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

SKA Murchison Widefield Array (AU), Boolardy station in outback Western Australia, at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

SKA Pathfinder – LOFAR location at Potsdam via Google Images.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, led by SKA Organization. The SKA will conduct transformational science to improve our understanding of the Universe and the laws of fundamental physics, monitoring the sky in unprecedented detail and mapping it hundreds of times faster than any current facility.
Members

In February 2021, the members of the SKAO consortium were:

Australia: Department of Industry and Science
Canada: National Research Council
China: National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
France: French National Centre for Scientific Research
Germany: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
India: National Centre for Radio Astrophysics
Italy: National Institute for Astrophysics
Portugal: Portugal Space
South Africa: National Research Foundation
Spain: Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia
Sweden: Onsala Space Observatory
Switzerland: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
The Netherlands: Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
United Kingdom: Science and Technology Facilities Council

As of December 2022, there were 16 countries involved in the project. SKA Organization has brought together some of the world’s finest scientists, engineers and policy makers and more than 100 companies and research institutions across 20 countries in the design and development of the telescope.

From The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) And From The Event Horizon Telescope : “Peering into the heart of a distant quasar with the Event Horizon Telescope”

From The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE)

And

The locations of the radio dishes of the Event Horizon Telescope array in 2019. Since then new telescopes have been added.

From The Event Horizon Telescope

2.8.23

A global collaboration of scientists used the Earth-size virtual radio telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), to see the innermost parts of the quasar NRAO 530. Quasars are extremely powerful sources of radiation located in the centers of distant galaxies. Their central engines are supermassive black holes, funneling accelerated particles and radiation into bright thin jets. Astronomers are trying to understand the complicated physics of these cosmic monsters, struggling with questions like how exactly are the jets powered and created, and what is the role of magnetic fields in their formation. The EHT offers extremely high, unprecedented angular resolution, allowing astronomers to image the previously unseen structures in the very central region of NRAO 530.

The EHT collaboration uses different imaging algorithms to gain confidence about the structure of an object on fine scales that are opaque at longer wavelengths. These include new methods developed explicitly for high frequency Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) imaging, eht-imaging, SMILI, DMC, and Themis, and the traditional VLBI method CLEAN. All of them were employed for obtaining the first image of the black hole shadow in the active galaxy M87 (EHT collaboration, 2019). The EHT allows scientists to investigate the magnetic field structure in the vicinity of the black hole and innermost part of the jet through observations of polarized light behavior. The figure shows images of the quasar NRAO 530 obtained by different methods in total and polarized light, which are presented in a new paper by Jorstad, Wielgus et al. 2023.

The images reveal a bright feature located on the southern end of the jet, which the authors associate with the VLBI core at millimeter wavelengths. In quasars similar to NRAO 530 the core manifests the place where the jet starts at a given wavelength. The core has a sub-structure consisting of two components, which is impossible to resolve at longer wavelengths. The jet extends over the distance that light crosses in ~1.7 years in projection on the sky plane and possesses two features with orthogonal directions of polarization (electric vector position angle, EVPA), parallel and perpendicular to the jet direction. The authors interpreted it as the indication of a helical structure of the magnetic field in the jet. “The outermost feature has a particularly high degree of linear polarization, suggestive of a very well ordered magnetic field,” notes Dr. Svetlana Jorstad, a senior scientist at Boston University, USA, who leads the NRAO 530 project. “It’s also the most distant object that we have imaged with the EHT so far. The light that we see traveled towards the Earth for 7.5 billion years through the expanding Universe, but with the power of the EHT we see the details of the source structure on a scale as small as a single light-year.” adds Dr. Maciek Wielgus, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, co-leading this study. The EHT collaboration looks forward to future observations of the quasar to understand how the innermost jet features and their connection to the production of high energy photons change over time, since NRAO 530 is a well known source of powerful gamma rays.

Images of NRAO 530 obtained by the EHT Collaboration using several different imaging methods, with the quasar core located toward the bottom-left part of the image, and the jet extending upwards (north). The contours show the structure in total (solid black) and polarized (dotted) light; dashes represent the direction of the observed polarization (EVPA).

The Astrophysical Journal

Figure 1.

EHT (u, v)-coverage of the NRAO 530 observations on 2017 April 5, 6, and 7, and all days aggregated. Each colored point corresponds to a single VLBI scan of 3–4 minutes. ALMA participated in the observations on 2017 April 6 and 7. Dashed circles indicate the fringe spacing of 50 and 25 μas. “Chile” represents the stations ALMA and APEX. “Hawaii” represents the stations SMA and JCMT.
See the science paper for further illustrations.

The Astrophysical Journal Letters 2019

Figure 1.

Eight stations of the EHT 2017 campaign over six geographic locations as viewed from the equatorial plane. Solid baselines represent mutual visibility on M87* (+12° declination). The dashed baselines were used for the
calibration source 3C279 (see Papers III and IV).
See the science paper for further illustrations.

_________________________________________
Event Horizon Telescope Array

The locations of the radio dishes that will be part of the Event Horizon Telescope array. Image credit: Event Horizon Telescope. via University of Arizona.

University of Arizona Radio Observatory at NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ., U Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory at altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

U Arizona 12 meter Radio Telescope

ESO operates the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, APEX, for The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) at one of the highest observatory sites on Earth, at an elevation of 5100 metres, high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region.

Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy(US)), in the Inyo Mountains to the east of the California Institute of Technology Owens Valley Radio Observatory, at a site called Cedar Flat, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft), relocated to Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Altitude 1,222 m (4,009 ft).

NAOJ Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) deployed to its site on Pampa La Bola, near Cerro Chajnantor and the Llano de Chajnantor, Observatory in northern Chile, Altitude 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

California Institute of Technology Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i, Altitude 4,205 m (13,796 ft).

IRAM-Institut de Radio Astronomie Millimétrique Plateau de Bure interferometer (FR) at an elevation of 2550 meters, the telescope currently consists of ten antennas, each 15 meters in diameter.interferometer, Located in the French Alpes on the wide and isolated Plateau de Bure at an elevation of 2550 meters.

East Asian Observatory James Clerk Maxwell Telescope MaunaKea Hawai’i, altitude 4207 m (13802 ft) above sea level.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica MX Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, Mexico, at an altitude of 4850 meters on top of the Sierra Negra.

CFA Harvard Smithsonian Submillimeter Array on MaunaKea, Hawai’i Altitude 4205 m (13796 ft).

The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Observatory (CL).

South Pole Telescope SPTPOL. The SPT collaboration is made up of over a dozen (mostly North American) institutions, including The University of Chicago; The University of California Berkeley; Case Western Reserve University; Harvard/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; The University of Colorado-Boulder; McGill University(CA); The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; The University of California-Davis; Ludwig Maximilians Universität München(DE); DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory; and The National Institute for Standards and Technology. It is funded by the National Science Foundation

About the Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope consortium consists of 13 stakeholder institutes; The Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics [中央研究院天文及天文物理研究所](TW) , The University of Arizona, The University of Chicago, The East Asian Observatory, Goethe University Frankfurt [Goethe-Universität](DE), Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Large Millimeter Telescope, The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy[MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE), MIT Haystack Observatory, The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan[[国立天文台](JP), The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (CA), Radboud University [Radboud Universiteit](NL) and The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
_________________________________________

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The EHT project combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, which form a combined array with an angular resolution sufficient to observe objects the size of a supermassive black hole’s event horizon. The project’s observational targets include the two black holes with the largest angular diameter as observed from Earth: the black hole at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87*, pronounced “M87-Star”), and Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced “Sagittarius A-Star”) at the center of the Milky Way.

Messier 87*, The first image of the event horizon of a black hole. This is the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87. Image via The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released on 10 April 2019 via National Science Foundation.

This is the first image of Sagittarius A* – [SGR A*] the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Credit: The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

The Event Horizon Telescope project is an international collaboration that was launched in 2009 after a long period of theoretical and technical developments. On the theory side, work on the photon orbit and first simulations of what a black hole would look like progressed to predictions of VLBI imaging for the Galactic Center black hole, Sgr A*. Technical advances in radio observing moved from the first detection of Sgr A*, through VLBI at progressively shorter wavelengths, ultimately leading to detection of horizon scale structure in both Sgr A* and Messier 87. The collaboration now comprises over 300 members, 60 institutions, working in over 20 countries and regions.

The first image of a black hole, at the center of galaxy Messier 87, was published by the EHT Collaboration on April 10, 2019, in a series of six scientific publications. The array made this observation at a wavelength of 1.3 mm and with a theoretical diffraction-limited resolution of 25 microarcseconds. In March 2021, the Collaboration presented, for the first time, a polarized-based image of the black hole which may help better reveal the forces giving rise to quasars. Future plans involve improving the array’s resolution by adding new telescopes and by taking shorter-wavelength observations. On 12 May 2022, astronomers unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*.

The EHT is composed of many radio observatories or radio-telescope facilities around the world, working together to produce a high-sensitivity, high-angular-resolution telescope. Through the technique of very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI), many independent radio antennas separated by hundreds or thousands of kilometres can act as a phased array, a virtual telescope which can be pointed electronically, with an effective aperture which is the diameter of the entire planet, substantially improving its angular resolution. The effort includes development and deployment of submillimeter dual polarization receivers, highly stable frequency standards to enable very-long-baseline interferometry at 230–450 GHz, higher-bandwidth VLBI backends and recorders, as well as commissioning of new submillimeter VLBI sites.

Each year since its first data capture in 2006, the EHT array has moved to add more observatories to its global network of radio telescopes. The first image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, was expected to be produced from data taken in April 2017, but because there are no flights in or out of the South Pole during austral winter (April to October), the full data set could not be processed until December 2017, when the shipment of data from the South Pole Telescope arrived.

Data collected on hard drives are transported by commercial freight airplanes (a so-called sneakernet) from the various telescopes to the MIT Haystack Observatory and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, where the data are cross-correlated and analyzed on a grid computer made from about 800 CPUs all connected through a 40 Gbit/s network.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, weather patterns, and celestial mechanics, the 2020 observational campaign was postponed to March 2021.

MPIFR campus

Effelsberg Radio Telescope- a radio telescope in the Ahr Hills (part of the Eifel) in Bad Münstereifel(DE)

The MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie] (DE) is located in Bonn, Germany. It is one of 80 institutes in the MPG Society.

By combining the already existing radio astronomy faculty of the University of Bonn led by Otto Hachenberg with the new MPG institute the MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy was formed. In 1972 the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg was opened. The institute building was enlarged in 1983 and 2002.

The institute was founded in 1966 by the MPG Society as the “MPG Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) (DE)”.

The foundation of the institute was closely linked to plans in the German astronomical community to construct a competitive large radio telescope in (then) West Germany. In 1964, Professors Friedrich Becker, Wolfgang Priester and Otto Hachenberg of the Astronomische Institute der Universität Bonn submitted a proposal to the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk for the construction of a large fully steerable radio telescope.

In the same year the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk approved the funding of the telescope project but with the condition that an organization should be found, which would guarantee the operations. It was clear that the operation of such a large instrument was well beyond the possibilities of a single university institute.

Already in 1965 the MPG Society decided in principle to found the MPG Institut für Radioastronomie. Eventually, after a series of discussions, the institute was officially founded in 1966.

MPG Society for the Advancement of Science [MPG Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.] is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and renamed the Max Planck Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. The society is funded by the federal and state governments of Germany as well as other sources.

According to its primary goal, the MPG Society supports fundamental research in the natural, life and social sciences, the arts and humanities in its 83 (as of January 2014) MPG Institutes. The society has a total staff of approximately 17,000 permanent employees, including 5,470 scientists, plus around 4,600 non-tenured scientists and guests. Society budget for 2015 was about €1.7 billion.

The MPG Institutes focus on excellence in research. The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization, with 33 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists, and is generally regarded as the foremost basic research organization in Europe and the world. In 2013, the Nature Publishing Index placed the MPG institutes fifth worldwide in terms of research published in Nature journals (after Harvard University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and The National Institutes of Health). In terms of total research volume (unweighted by citations or impact), the Max Planck Society is only outranked by The Chinese Academy of Sciences [中国科学院](CN), The Russian Academy of Sciences [Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к](RU) and Harvard University. The Thomson Reuters-Science Watch website placed the MPG Society as the second leading research organization worldwide following Harvard University, in terms of the impact of the produced research over science fields.

The MPG Society and its predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm Society hosted several renowned scientists in their fields, including Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein.

History

The organization was established in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, or Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG), a non-governmental research organization named for the then German emperor. The KWG was one of the world’s leading research organizations; its board of directors included scientists like Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, and Fritz Haber. In 1946, Otto Hahn assumed the position of President of KWG, and in 1948, the society was renamed the Max Planck Society (MPG) after its former President (1930–37) Max Planck, who died in 1947.

The MPG Society has a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization. In 2006, the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings of non-university research institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the MPG Society as No.1 in the world for science research, and No.3 in technology research (behind AT&T Corporation and The DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The domain mpg.de attracted at least 1.7 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.

MPG Institutes and research groups

The MPG Society consists of over 80 research institutes. In addition, the society funds a number of Max Planck Research Groups (MPRG) and International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS). The purpose of establishing independent research groups at various universities is to strengthen the required networking between universities and institutes of the Max Planck Society.
The research units are primarily located across Europe with a few in South Korea and the U.S. In 2007, the Society established its first non-European centre, with an institute on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University (US) focusing on neuroscience.
The MPG Institutes operate independently from, though in close cooperation with, the universities, and focus on innovative research which does not fit into the university structure due to their interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature or which require resources that cannot be met by the state universities.

Internally, MPG Institutes are organized into research departments headed by directors such that each MPI has several directors, a position roughly comparable to anything from full professor to department head at a university. Other core members include Junior and Senior Research Fellows.

In addition, there are several associated institutes:
International Max Planck Research Schools
Together with the Association of Universities and other Education Institutions in Germany, the Max Planck Society established numerous International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS) to promote junior scientists:

• Cologne Graduate School of Ageing Research, Cologne
• International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems, at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems located in Tübingen and Stuttgart
• International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World (Uncertainty School), at the Max Planck Institutes for Economics, for Human Development, and/or Research on Collective Goods
• International Max Planck Research School for Analysis, Design and Optimization in Chemical and Biochemical Process Engineering, Magdeburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics, Heidelberg at the MPI for Astronomy
• International Max Planck Research School for Astrophysics, Garching at the MPI for Astrophysics
• International Max Planck Research School for Complex Surfaces in Material Sciences, Berlin
• International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science, Saarbrücken
• International Max Planck Research School for Earth System Modeling, Hamburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Elementary Particle Physics, Munich, at the MPI for Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology, Marburg at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology
• International Max Planck Research School for Evolutionary Biology, Plön at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology
• International Max Planck Research School “From Molecules to Organisms”, Tübingen at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
• International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Jena at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
• International Max Planck Research School on Gravitational Wave Astronomy, Hannover and Potsdam MPI for Gravitational Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Heart and Lung Research, Bad Nauheim at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research
• International Max Planck Research School for Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
• International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Nijmegen
• International Max Planck Research School for Neurosciences, Göttingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, Tübingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Marine Microbiology (MarMic), joint program of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, the University of Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, and the Jacobs University Bremen
• International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs, Hamburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Freiburg
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences, Munich
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology, Göttingen
• International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Cell Biology and Bioengineering, Dresden
• International Max Planck Research School Molecular Biomedicine, program combined with the ‘Graduate Programm Cell Dynamics And Disease’ at the University of Münster and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine
• International Max Planck Research School on Multiscale Bio-Systems, Potsdam
• International Max Planck Research School for Organismal Biology, at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
• International Max Planck Research School on Reactive Structure Analysis for Chemical Reactions (IMPRS RECHARGE), Mülheim an der Ruhr, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion
• International Max Planck Research School for Science and Technology of Nano-Systems, Halle at Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics
• International Max Planck Research School for Solar System Science at the University of Göttingen hosted by MPI for Solar System Research
• International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Bonn, at the MPI for Radio Astronomy (formerly the International Max Planck Research School for Radio and Infrared Astronomy)
• International Max Planck Research School for the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, Cologne
• International Max Planck Research School for Surface and Interface Engineering in Advanced Materials, Düsseldorf at Max Planck Institute for Iron Research GmbH
• International Max Planck Research School for Ultrafast Imaging and Structural Dynamics, Hamburg

Max Planck Schools

• Max Planck School of Cognition
• Max Planck School Matter to Life
• Max Planck School of Photonics

Max Planck Center

• The Max Planck Centre for Attosecond Science (MPC-AS), POSTECH Pohang
• The Max Planck POSTECH Center for Complex Phase Materials, POSTECH Pohang

Max Planck Institutes

Among others:
• Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior – caesar, Bonn
• Max Planck Institute for Aeronomics in Katlenburg-Lindau was renamed to Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in 2004;
• Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen was closed in 2005;
• Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology in Ladenburg b. Heidelberg was closed in 2003;
• Max Planck Institute for Economics in Jena was renamed to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in 2014;
• Max Planck Institute for Ionospheric Research in Katlenburg-Lindau was renamed to Max Planck Institute for Aeronomics in 1958;
• Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Stuttgart
• Max Planck Institute of Oceanic Biology in Wilhelmshaven was renamed to Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology in 1968 and moved to Ladenburg 1977;
• Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich merged into the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in 2004;
• Max Planck Institute for Protein and Leather Research in Regensburg moved to Munich 1957 and was united with the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in 1977;
• Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen was renamed as Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in 1985;
• Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg (from 1970 until 1981 (closed)) directed by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Jürgen Habermas.
• Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology
• Max Planck Institute of Experimental Endocrinology
• Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Social Law
• Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics
• Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding
• Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing

From The University of Hong Kong [香港大學](HK) Via “phys.org” : “Researchers inspect a nearby pulsar wind nebula”

From The University of Hong Kong [香港大學](HK)

Via

“phys.org”

2.8.23

Total intensity images of the B1706 PWN at the 3 and 6 cm bands in the off-pulse phase with the pulsar emission excluded. Credit: Liu et al, 2023.

Using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), astronomers from Hong Kong [above] and Australia [The University of Western Australia (AU)] have performed radio observations of a nearby pulsar wind nebula (PWN) powered by the pulsar PSR B1706−44.

ATCA CSIRO Australia Telescope Compact Array (AU), six radio telescopes at the Paul Wild Observatory, is an array of six 22-m antennas located about twenty five kilometres (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in Australia.

Results of the study, published January 31 on for The Astrophysical Journal [below], deliver important insights regarding the properties of this PWN and its associated pulsar.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars born supernova (SN) explosions, emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation.

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discovered pulsars with radio astronomy. Jocelyn Bell at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Cambridge (UK), taken for the Daily Herald newspaper in 1968. Denied the Nobel.

They are usually detected in the form of short bursts of radio emission; however, some of them are also observed via optical, X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes.

PWNe are nebulae powered by the wind of a pulsar. Pulsar wind is composed of charged particles and when it collides with the pulsar’s surroundings, in particular with the slowly expanding supernova ejecta, it develops a PWN. Observations of PWNe have shown that the particles in these objects lose their energy to radiation and become less energetic with distance from the central pulsar.

At a distance of some 8,500 light years from the Earth, the B1706 PWN is a pulsar wind nebula with a compact torus and jet structure, powered by the Vela-like pulsar PSR B1706−44. The PWN showcases a diffused emission around the torus and has a long curved outer-jet. The pulsar, moving eastward with a projected velocity of 130 km/s, has a characteristic age of 17,100 years and a spin-down power of about 4.0 erg/s.

PSR B1706−44 is located at the east-west ridge of the southern part of a supernova remnant (SNR) known as G343.1−2.3. Previous studies suggested that PSR B1706−44 is associated with this SNR, finding an extended TeV emission west of the pulsar, which has some connection with the remnant.

A team of astronomers led by Yihan Liu of the University of Hong Kong has conducted high-resolution radio observations of B1706 PWN in order learn more about its properties, which could also shed more light on the potential connection of the pulsar with G343.1−2.3.

“In this paper, we analyze new and archival radio observations of the PWN powered by PSR B1706−44 (hereafter B1706 PWN) and SNR G343.1−2.3 taken with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) at 3, 6, 13, and 21 cm images. We employed new observations with high resolution aiming to better study the morphology and polarization information of this PWN,” the researchers explained.

The radio observations found that B1706 PWN exhibits an overall arc-like morphology at 3 and 6 cm, and that this “arc” shows two distinct peaks at 6 cm. The arc-like structure has dimensions of 4 by 2 arcminutes and wraps around PSR B1706−44 in the north.

According to the study, no radio emission was detected at the PWN’s X-ray torus and jet location, but was identified only beyond 10 arcseconds from the pulsar. The astronomers assume that the radio PWN morphology can be fit by a thick torus model with Doppler boosting effect. They noted that this would mean a bulk flow velocity at a level of about 20% the speed of light, therefore lower than that in the X-ray torus.

The study found that B1706 PWN has a toroidal magnetic field with a field strength of about 10 µG—assuming equipartition between particle and magnetic field energies. This suggests a slight decay compared with that of the X-ray bright region.

The observations also found that the ridge of G343.1−2.3 exhibits elongation and magnetic field well aligned with the proper motion direction of PSR B1706−44, as well as a radio spectrum flatter than the rest of the shell. The researchers concluded that these results may indicate that the ridge is a pulsar tail instead of being a filamentary structure of the SNR.

The Astrophysical Journal

See the full article here.
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The University of Hong Kong [香港大學](HK) is a public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1911, its origins trace back to the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, which was founded in 1887. It is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. HKU was also the first university established by the British in East Asia.

As of 2020, HKU ranks third in Asia and 22nd internationally by QS, and fourth in Asia and 35th internationally by THE. It has been commonly regarded as one of the most internationalized universities in the world as well as one of the most prestigious universities in Asia. Today, HKU has ten academic faculties with English as the main language of instruction. HKU also ranks highly in the sciences, dentistry, biomedicine, architecture, education, humanities, law, economics, business administration, linguistics, political science, and the social work and social administration.

The University of Hong Kong was also the first team in the world to successfully isolate the coronavirus SARS-CoV, the causative agent of SARS.

Research

The university is a founding member of Universitas 21, an international consortium of research-led universities, and a member of the Association for Pacific Rim Universities, The Association of Commonwealth Universities, Washington University in St. Louis’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy, and many others. HKU benefits from a large operating budget supplied by high levels of government funding compared to many Western countries. In 2018/19, the Research Grants Council (RGC) granted HKU a total research funding of HK$12,127 million (41.3% of overall RGC funding), which was the highest among all universities in Hong Kong. HKU professors were among the highest paid in the world as well, having salaries far exceeding those of their US counterparts in private universities. However, with the reduction of salaries in recent years, this is no longer the case.
HKU research output, researchers, projects, patents and theses are profiled and made publicly available in the HKU Scholars Hub. 100 members of academic staff (>10% of professoriate staff) from HKU are ranked among the world’s top 1% of scientists by the Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators, by means of the citations recorded on their publications. The university has the largest number of research postgraduate students in Hong Kong, making up approximately 10% of the total student population. All ten faculties and departments provide teaching and supervision for research (MPhil and PhD) students with administration undertaken by the Graduate School.

From The University of Colorado-Boulder: “A star is born – Study reveals complex chemistry inside ‘stellar nurseries’”

From The University of Colorado-Boulder

2.6.23
Daniel Strain
daniel.strain@colorado.edu

Gas and dust swirl in the Taurus Molecular Cloud (TMC-1) as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory. (Credit: ESA/Herschel; R. Hurt/JPL-Caltech/NASA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU).
Herschel spacecraft active from 2009 to 2013.

An international team of researchers has uncovered what might be a critical step in the chemical evolution of molecules in cosmic “stellar nurseries.” In these vast clouds of cold gas and dust in space, trillions of molecules swirl together over millions of years. The collapse of these interstellar clouds eventually gives rise to young stars and planets.

Like human bodies, stellar nurseries contain a lot of organic molecules, which are made up mostly of carbon and hydrogen atoms. The group’s results, published Feb. 6 in the journal Nature Astronomy [below], reveal how certain large organic molecules may form inside these clouds. It’s one tiny step in the eons-long chemical journey that carbon atoms undergo—forming in the hearts of dying stars, then becoming part of planets, living organisms on Earth and perhaps beyond.

“In these cold molecular clouds, you’re creating the first building blocks that will, in the end, form stars and planets,” said Jordy Bouwman, research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at CU Boulder.

Graphic showing how hexagonally-shaped ortho-benzyne molecules can combine with methyl radicals to form a series of larger organic molecules, each containing a ring of five carbon atoms. (Credit: Henry Cardwell)

For the new study, Bouwman and his colleagues took a deep dive into one stellar nursery in particular: the Taurus Molecular Cloud (TMC-1). This region sits in the constellation Taurus and is roughly 440 light years (more than 2 quadrillion miles) from Earth. The chemically complex environment is an example of what astronomers call an “accreting starless core.” Its cloud has begun to collapse, but scientists haven’t yet detected embryonic stars emerging inside it.

The team’s findings hinge on a deceptively simple molecule called ortho-benzyne. Drawing on experiments on Earth and computer simulations, the researchers showed that this molecule can readily combine with others in space to form a wide range of larger organic molecules.

Small building blocks, in other words, become big building blocks.

And, Bouwman said, those reactions could be a sign that stellar nurseries are a lot more interesting than scientists give them credit for.

“We’re only at the start of truly understanding how we go from these small building blocks to larger molecules,” he said. “I think we’ll find that this chemistry is so much more complex than we thought, even at the earliest stages of star formation.”

Fateful observation

Bouwman is a cosmochemist, studying a field that blends chemistry and astronomy to understand the churning chemical reactions that happen deep in space.

On the surface, he said, cold molecular clouds might not seem like a hotbed of chemical activity. As their name suggests, these galactic primordial soups tend to be frigid, often hovering around -263 degrees Celsius (about -440 degrees Fahrenheit), just 10 degrees above absolute zero. Most reactions need at least a little bit of heat to get a kick-start.

But cold or not, complex chemistry seems to be happening in stellar nurseries. TMC-1, in particular, contains surprising concentrations of relatively large organic molecules with names like fulvenallene and 1- and 2-ethynylcyclopentadiene. Chemists call them “five-membered ring compounds” because they each contain a ring of carbon atoms shaped like a pentagon.

“Researchers kept detecting these molecules in TMC-1, but their origin was unclear,” Bouwman said.

Now, he and his colleagues think they have an answer.

In 2021, researchers using the Yebes 40-metre Radio telescope in Spain found an unexpected molecule hiding in the clouds of gas of TMC-1: ortho-benzyne.

Yebes Observatory RT40m (ES). European VLBI Network (EU) (EVN)

Bouwman explained that this small molecule, made up of a ring of six carbon atoms with four hydrogens, is one of the extroverts of the chemistry world. It easily interacts with a number of other molecules and doesn’t require a lot of heat to do so.

“There’s no barrier to reaction,” Bouwman said. “That means it has the potential to drive complex chemistry in cold environments.”

Identifying the culprit

To find out what kind of complex chemistry was happening in TMC-1, Bouwman and his colleagues—who hail from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland—turned to a technique called “photoelectron photoion coincidence spectroscopy.” The team used light generated by a giant facility called a synchotron light source to identify the products of chemical reactions.

Swiss Light Source SLS Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)

Paul Sherrer Institute SwissFEL Coherent Light Source

They saw that ortho-benzyne and methyl radicals, another common constituent of molecular clouds, readily combine to form larger and more complex organic compounds.

“We knew we were onto something good,” Bouwman said.

The team then drew on computer models to explore the role of ortho-benzyne in a stellar nursery spread out over several light-years deep in space. The results were promising: The models generated clouds of gas containing roughly the same mix of organic molecules that astronomers had observed in TMC-1 using telescopes.

Ortho-benzyne, in other words, seems to be a prime candidate for driving the gas-phase organic chemistry that occurs within these stellar nurseries, Bouwman said.

He added that scientists still have a lot of work to do to fully understand all of the reactions happening in TMC-1. He wants to examine, for example, how organic molecules in space also pick up nitrogen atoms—key components of the DNA and amino acids of living organisms on Earth.

“Our findings may just change the view on what ingredients we have in the first place to form new stars and new planets,” Bouwman said.

Co-authors on the new paper include researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Benedictine College in the U.S., the University of Würzburg in Germany and Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.

Nature Astronomy

See the full article here .

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Stem Education Coalition

As the flagship university of the state of Colorado The University of Colorado-Boulder , founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state. It is a dynamic community of scholars and learners situated on one of the most spectacular college campuses in the country, and is classified as an R1 University, meaning that it engages in a very high level of research activity. As one of 34 U.S. public institutions belonging to the prestigious Association of American Universities ), a selective group of major research universities in North America, – and the only member in the Rocky Mountain region – we have a proud tradition of academic excellence, with five Nobel laureates and more than 50 members of prestigious academic academies.

University of Colorado-Boulder has blossomed in size and quality since we opened our doors in 1877 – attracting superb faculty, staff, and students and building strong programs in the sciences, engineering, business, law, arts, humanities, education, music, and many other disciplines.

Today, with our sights set on becoming the standard for the great comprehensive public research universities of the new century, we strive to serve the people of Colorado and to engage with the world through excellence in our teaching, research, creative work, and service.

In 2015, the university comprised nine colleges and schools and offered over 150 academic programs and enrolled almost 17,000 students. Five Nobel Laureates, nine MacArthur Fellows, and 20 astronauts have been affiliated with CU Boulder as students; researchers; or faculty members in its history. In 2010, the university received nearly $454 million in sponsored research to fund programs like the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and JILA. CU Boulder has been called a Public Ivy, a group of publicly funded universities considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.

The Colorado Buffaloes compete in 17 varsity sports and are members of the NCAA Division I Pac-12 Conference. The Buffaloes have won 28 national championships: 20 in skiing, seven total in men’s and women’s cross country, and one in football. The university has produced a total of ten Olympic medalists. Approximately 900 students participate in 34 intercollegiate club sports annually as well.

On March 14, 1876, the Colorado territorial legislature passed an amendment to the state constitution that provided money for the establishment of the University of Colorado in Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, and the Colorado State University – College of Agricultural Sciences in Fort Collins.

Two cities competed for the site of the University of Colorado: Boulder and Cañon City. The consolation prize for the losing city was to be home of the new Colorado State Prison. Cañon City was at a disadvantage as it was already the home of the Colorado Territorial Prison. (There are now six prisons in the Cañon City area.)

The cornerstone of the building that became Old Main was laid on September 20, 1875. The doors of the university opened on September 5, 1877. At the time, there were few high schools in the state that could adequately prepare students for university work, so in addition to the University, a preparatory school was formed on campus. In the fall of 1877, the student body consisted of 15 students in the college proper and 50 students in the preparatory school. There were 38 men and 27 women, and their ages ranged from 12–23 years.

During World War II, Colorado was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a navy commission.

University of Colorado-Boulder hired its first female professor, Mary Rippon, in 1878. It hired its first African-American professor, Charles H. Nilon, in 1956, and its first African-American librarian, Mildred Nilon, in 1962. Its first African American female graduate, Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, received her degree in 1918.

Research institutes

University of Colorado-Boulder’s research mission is supported by eleven research institutes within the university. Each research institute supports faculty from multiple academic departments, allowing institutes to conduct truly multidisciplinary research.

The Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) is a research institute within the Graduate School dedicated to conducting and facilitating research on the genetic and environmental bases of individual differences in behavior. After its founding in 1967 IBG led the resurging interest in genetic influences on behavior. IBG was the first post-World War II research institute dedicated to research in behavioral genetics. IBG remains one of the top research facilities for research in behavioral genetics, including human behavioral genetics, psychiatric genetics, quantitative genetics, statistical genetics, and animal behavioral genetics.

The Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS) at CU Boulder promotes interdisciplinary research and training in cognitive science. ICS is highly interdisciplinary; its research focuses on education, language processing, emotion, and higher level cognition using experimental methods. It is home to a state-of-the-art fMRI system used to collect neuroimaging data.

ATLAS Institute is a center for interdisciplinary research and academic study, where engineering, computer science and robotics are blended with design-oriented topics. Part of CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, the institute offers academic programs at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels, and administers research labs, hacker and makerspaces, and a black box experimental performance studio. At the beginning of the 2018–2019 academic year, approximately 1,200 students were enrolled in ATLAS academic programs and the institute sponsored six research labs.[64]

In addition to IBG, ICS and ATLAS, the university’s other institutes include Biofrontiers Institute, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research (INSTAAR), Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), JILA, Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics (LASP), Renewable & Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), and the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

From The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope: “Untangling a Knot of Galaxy Clusters”

From The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra X-ray telescope

1.30.23

Abell 2256, Labeled (Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bolonga/K. Rajpurohit et al.; XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton/Univ. of Bolonga/K. Rajpurohit et al.
Radio: LOFAR: LOFAR/ASTRON; GMRT: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; VLA: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Optical/IR: Pan-STARRS

Astronomers have captured a spectacular, ongoing collision between at least three galaxy clusters. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton, and a trio of radio telescopes is helping astronomers sort out what is happening in this jumbled scene.

The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agencia Espacial Europea][Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) XMM Newton X-ray Telescope.

Collisions and mergers like this are the main way that galaxy clusters can grow into the gigantic cosmic edifices seen today. These also act as the largest particle accelerators in the universe.

The giant galaxy cluster forming from this collision is Abell 2256, located 780 million light-years from Earth. This composite image of Abell 2256 combines X-rays from Chandra and XMM in blue with radio data collected by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) all in red, plus optical and infrared data from Pan-STARRs in white and pale yellow.

Upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, an array of thirty telescopes, located near Pune in India.

ASTRON Institute for Radio Astronomy(NL) LOFAR Radio Antenna Bank(NL)

National Radio Astronomy Observatory Karl G Jansky Very Large Array located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes.

Pann-STARS 1 Telescope, U Hawai’i, situated at Haleakala Observatories near the summit of Haleakala in Hawai’i altitude 3,052 m (10,013 ft).

Astronomers studying this object are trying to tease out what has led to this unusual-looking structure. Each telescope tells a different part of the story. Galaxy clusters are some of the biggest objects in the universe containing hundreds or even thousands of individual galaxies. In addition, they contain enormous reservoirs of superheated gas, with temperatures of several million degrees Fahrenheit. Only X-ray telescopes like Chandra and XMM can see this hot gas. A labeled version of the figure shows gas from two of the galaxy clusters, with the third blended too closely to separate from the others.

The radio emission in this system arises from an even more complex set of sources. The first are the galaxies themselves, in which the radio signal is generated by particles blasting away in jets from supermassive black holes at their centers. These jets are either shooting into space in straight and narrow lines (those labeled “C” and “I” in the annotated image, using the astronomer’s naming system) or slowed down as the jets interact with gas they are running into, creating complex shapes and filaments (“A”, “B,” and “F”). Source F contains three sources, all created by a black hole in a galaxy aligning with the left-most source of this trio.

Radio waves are also coming from huge filamentary structures (labeled “relic”), mostly located to the north of the radio-emitting galaxies, likely generated when the collision created shock waves and accelerated particles in the gas across over two million light-years. A paper analyzing this structure was published earlier this year by Kamlesh Rajpurohit from the University of Bologna in Italy in the March 2022 issue of The Astrophysical Journal [below]. This is Paper I in an ongoing series studying different aspects of this colliding galaxy cluster system.

Finally, there is a “halo” of radio emission located near the center of the collision. Because this halo overlaps with the X-ray emission and is dimmer than the filamentary structure and the galaxies, another radio image has been produced to emphasize the faint radio emission. Paper II led by Rajpurohit, recently published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics [below], presents a model that the halo emission may be caused by the reacceleration of particles by rapid changes in the temperature and density of the gas as the collision and merging of the clusters proceed. This model, however, is unable to explain all the features of the radio data, highlighting the need for more theoretical study of this and similar objects.

Halo of Radio Emission (Credit: LOFAR/ASTRON)

Paper III by Rajpurohit and collaborators will study the galaxies producing radio waves in Abell 2256. This cluster contains an unusually large number of such galaxies, possibly because the collision and merger are triggering the growth of supermassive black holes and consequent eruptions. More details about the LOFAR image of Abell 2256 will be reported in an upcoming paper by Erik Osinga.

The full list of co-authors for papers I and II include researchers from the University of Bologna, Italy (Franco Vazza, Annalisa Bonafede, Andrea Botteon, Christopher J. Riseley, Paola Domínguez-Fernández, Chiara Stuardi, and Daniele Dallacasa); Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, the Netherlands (Erik Osinga, Reinout J. van Weeren, Timothy Shimwell, Huub Röttgering, and George Miley); Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany (Matthias Hoeft and Alexander Drabent); INAF-Istituto di Radio Astronomia, Bologna, Italy (Gianfranco Brunetti and Rossella Cassano); Hamburger Sternwarte, Germany (Denis Wittor, Marcus Brüggen, and Francesco de Gasperin); Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Italy (Marisa Brienza); Center for Astrophysics, Harvard | Smithsonian (William Forman); Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley (Sangeeta Rajpurohit); Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India (Arvind Singh Rajpurohit); Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany (Etienne Bonnassieux), and INAF–IASF Milano, Italy (Mariachiara Rossetti).

The Astrophysical Journal 2022
Astronomy and Astrophysics 2023

See the full article here .

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NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
In 1976 the Chandra X-ray Observatory (called AXAF at the time) was proposed to National Aeronautics and Space Administration by Riccardo Giacconi and Harvey Tananbaum. Preliminary work began the following year at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In the meantime, in 1978, NASA launched the first imaging X-ray telescope, Einstein (HEAO-2), into orbit. Work continued on the AXAF project throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, to reduce costs, the spacecraft was redesigned. Four of the twelve planned mirrors were eliminated, as were two of the six scientific instruments. AXAF’s planned orbit was changed to an elliptical one, reaching one third of the way to the Moon’s at its farthest point. This eliminated the possibility of improvement or repair by the space shuttle but put the observatory above the Earth’s radiation belts for most of its orbit. AXAF was assembled and tested by TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems) in Redondo Beach, California.

AXAF was renamed Chandra as part of a contest held by NASA in 1998, which drew more than 6,000 submissions worldwide. The contest winners, Jatila van der Veen and Tyrel Johnson (then a high school teacher and high school student, respectively), suggested the name in honor of Nobel Prize–winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He is known for his work in determining the maximum mass of white dwarf stars, leading to greater understanding of high energy astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars and black holes. Fittingly, the name Chandra means “moon” in Sanskrit.

Originally scheduled to be launched in December 1998, the spacecraft was delayed several months, eventually being launched on July 23, 1999, at 04:31 UTC by Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-93. Chandra was deployed from Columbia at 11:47 UTC. The Inertial Upper Stage’s first stage motor ignited at 12:48 UTC, and after burning for 125 seconds and separating, the second stage ignited at 12:51 UTC and burned for 117 seconds. At 22,753 kilograms (50,162 lb), it was the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle, a consequence of the two-stage Inertial Upper Stage booster rocket system needed to transport the spacecraft to its high orbit.

Chandra has been returning data since the month after it launched. It is operated by the SAO at the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with assistance from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northrop Grumman Space Technology. The ACIS CCDs suffered particle damage during early radiation belt passages. To prevent further damage, the instrument is now removed from the telescope’s focal plane during passages.

Although Chandra was initially given an expected lifetime of 5 years, on September 4, 2001, NASA extended its lifetime to 10 years “based on the observatory’s outstanding results.” Physically Chandra could last much longer. A 2004 study performed at the Chandra X-ray Center indicated that the observatory could last at least 15 years.

In July 2008, the International X-ray Observatory, a joint project between European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU), NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) (国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構], was proposed as the next major X-ray observatory but was later cancelled. ESA later resurrected a downsized version of the project as the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), with a proposed launch in 2028.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU) Athena spacecraft depiction

On October 10, 2018, Chandra entered safe mode operations, due to a gyroscope glitch. NASA reported that all science instruments were safe. Within days, the 3-second error in data from one gyro was understood, and plans were made to return Chandra to full service. The gyroscope that experienced the glitch was placed in reserve and is otherwise healthy.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [NASA/ESA Hubble, NASA Chandra, NASA Spitzer, and associated programs.] NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.