From JPL: “NuSTAR’s First Five Years in Space”

JPL-Caltech

June 13, 2017
Written by Whitney Clavin, Caltech

Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
Elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Whitney Clavin
Caltech, Pasadena, Calif.
626-395-1856
wclavin@caltech.edu

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft on orbit. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Five years ago, on June 13, 2012, Caltech’s Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of NASA’s NuSTAR mission, watched with her team as their black-hole-spying spacecraft was launched into space aboard a rocket strapped to the belly of an aircraft. The launch occurred over the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Many members of the team anxiously followed the launch from the mission’s operations center at the University of California, Berkeley, anxious to see what NuSTAR would find.

Now, Harrison shares her take on five of the mission’s many iconic images and artist concepts — ranging from our flaring sun to distant, buried black holes. NuSTAR is the first telescope capable of focusing high-energy X-rays — and it has taken the most detailed images of the sky in this energy regime to date.

This artist’s concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Untangling the Remains of Cassiopeia A Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CXC/SAO

“This is a beautiful image, and one of the things we built NuSTAR to do — to make the first-ever map of emission from radioactivity in the remnant of an exploded star,” Harrison said. “We spent years developing specialized detectors to have the capability to make this image. From the image, we were able to determine the mechanism that caused the star to explode.” NuSTAR data show high-energy X-rays from radioactive material in blue. Non-radioactive materials are red, yellow and green.

NuSTAR Finds a Pulse in Cigar Galaxy. Low-energy X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored blue, and higher-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR are pink. The bulk of a galaxy called Messier 82 (M82), or the “Cigar galaxy,” is seen in visible-light data captured by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAO/NOAO

NASA/Chandra Telescope

2.1 meter NOAO telescope, Kitt Peak, AZ, USA

NuSTAR Stares at the Sun. High-energy X-rays from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) are shown in blue; low-energy X-rays from Japan’s Hinode spacecraft are green; and extreme ultraviolet light from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is yellow and red. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/JAXA

“With NuSTAR, we see flaring, active regions of the sun where high-energy particles are being created. NuSTAR was built as an astrophysics mission, not to study the sun,” Harrison said. “People thought we were crazy at first to point such a sensitive observatory at the sun and potentially ruin it. But now, by studying the sun with much greater sensitivity in high-energy X-rays, we are making important contributions to the field of solar physics.”.

JAXA/HINODE spacecraft

NASA/SDO

“This is a beautiful image, and one of the things we built NuSTAR to do — to make the first-ever map of emission from radioactivity in the remnant of an exploded star,” Harrison said. “We spent years developing specialized detectors to have the capability to make this image. From the image, we were able to determine the mechanism that caused the star to explode.” NuSTAR data show high-energy X-rays from radioactive material in blue. Non-radioactive materials are red, yellow and green.
NuSTAR Finds a Pulse in Cigar Galaxy

“This result was one of the biggest surprises from NuSTAR. We detected X-ray pulses from an object in a galaxy that everybody had assumed was a black hole, thereby showing it was actually a stellar remnant called a pulsar. At the time, it was by far the brightest pulsar known. At first nobody believed it, but the signal was so strong and clear,” Harrison said. Since this discovery two other extremely bright pulsars have been found — prompted by NuSTAR’s discovery. High-energy X-rays from the pulsar are seen in pink at the center of the
image.

Galaxy NGC 1448 with Active Galactic Nucleus.

“This image illustrates another major accomplishment NuSTAR was designed for — to find hidden black holes buried by dust and gas,” Harrison said. “This is a wonderful result, led by two graduate students. What they found is that there is a thick layer of gas and dust hiding the active black hole in the galaxy NGC 1448 from our sight.”

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror archive. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information on NuSTAR, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/nustar

http://www.nustar.caltech.edu

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

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

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From JPL-Caltech: “NuSTAR Probes Puzzling Galaxy Merger”

JPL-Caltech

March 27, 2017
Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

This optical image shows the Was 49 system, which consists of a large disk galaxy, Was 49a, merging with a much smaller “dwarf” galaxy Was 49b. Image credit: DCT/NRL [Discovery Channel Telescope, Happy Jack, AZ, USA/ Naval Research Laboratory.]

A supermassive black hole inside a tiny galaxy is challenging scientists’ ideas about what happens when two galaxies become one.

Was 49 is the name of a system consisting of a large disk galaxy, referred to as Was 49a, merging with a much smaller “dwarf” galaxy called Was 49b. The dwarf galaxy rotates within the larger galaxy’s disk, about 26,000 light-years from its center. Thanks to NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, scientists have discovered that the dwarf galaxy is so luminous in high-energy X-rays, it must host a supermassive black hole much larger and more powerful than expected.

NASA/NuSTAR

“This is a completely unique system and runs contrary to what we understand of galaxy mergers,” said Nathan Secrest, lead author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Data from NuSTAR and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey suggest that the mass of the dwarf galaxy’s black hole is huge, compared to similarly sized galaxies, at more than 2 percent of the galaxy’s own mass.

SDSS Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, NM, USA

“We didn’t think that dwarf galaxies hosted supermassive black holes this big,” Secrest said. “This black hole could be hundreds of times more massive than what we would expect for a galaxy of this size, depending on how the galaxy evolved in relation to other galaxies.”

The dwarf galaxy’s black hole is the engine of an active galactic nucleus (AGN), a cosmic phenomenon in which extremely high-energy radiation bursts forth as a black hole devours gas and dust. This particular AGN appears to be covered by a donut-shaped structure made of gas and dust. NASA’s Chandra and Swift missions were used to further characterize the X-ray emission.

NASA/Chandra Telescope

NASA/SWIFT Telescope

Normally, when two galaxies start to merge, the larger galaxy’s central black hole becomes active, voraciously gobbling gas and dust, and spewing out high-energy X-rays as matter gets converted into energy. That is because, as galaxies approach each other, their gravitational interactions create a torque that funnels gas into the larger galaxy’s central black hole. But in this case, the smaller galaxy hosts a more luminous AGN with a more active supermassive black hole, and the larger galaxy’s central black hole is relatively quiet.

Normally, when two galaxies start to merge, the larger galaxy’s central black hole becomes active, voraciously gobbling gas and dust, and spewing out high-energy X-rays as matter gets converted into energy. That is because, as galaxies approach each other, their gravitational interactions create a torque that funnels gas into the larger galaxy’s central black hole. But in this case, the smaller galaxy hosts a more luminous AGN with a more active supermassive black hole, and the larger galaxy’s central black hole is relatively quiet.

An optical image of the Was 49 system, compiled using observations from the Discovery Channel Telescope in Happy Jack, Arizona, uses the same color filters as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory, Happy Jack AZ, USA

Since Was 49 is so far away, these colors are optimized to separate highly-ionized gas emission, such as the pink-colored region around the feeding supermassive black hole, from normal starlight, shown in green. This allowed astronomers to more accurately determine the size of the dwarf galaxy that hosts the supermassive black hole.

The pink-colored emission stands out in a new image because of the intense ionizing radiation emanating from the powerful AGN. Buried within this region of intense ionization is a faint collection of stars, believed to be part of the galaxy surrounding the enormous black hole. These striking features lie on the outskirts of the much larger spiral galaxy Was 49a, which appears greenish in the image due to the distance to the galaxy and the optical filters used.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why the supermassive black hole of dwarf galaxy Was 49b is so big. It may have already been large before the merger began, or it may have grown during the very early phase of the merger.

“This study is important because it may give new insight into how supermassive black holes form and grow in such systems,” Secrest said. “By examining systems like this, we may find clues as to how our own galaxy’s supermassive black hole formed.”

In several hundred million years, the black holes of the large and small galaxies will merge into one enormous beast.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror archive.

For more information on NuSTAR, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nustar

http://www.nustar.caltech.edu

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

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

From Astronomy: “This nearby supermassive black hole packs a pretty big punch”

Astronomy Magazine

March 01, 2017
Alison Klesman

NGC 6814 is a stunning example of a Seyfert galaxy. Like IRAS 13224−3809, this galaxy hosts a bright, highly X-ray variable supermassive black hole at its center. ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

Supermassive black holes are associated with the vast majority of galaxies. They’re believed to evolve with their host galaxies and even to affect galaxy growth over time, owing to their ability to gobble up vast amounts of gas and dust and shoot high-energy radiation back out into their surroundings.

There are measurable correlations between the mass of a supermassive black hole and the properties of its host galaxy’s bulge, such as the luminosity of the bulge and the movements of stars within it. The reasons for these correlations are still unknown, but astronomers have long believed that supermassive black holes affect the star formation around them via some sort of feedback process.

In a letter printed today in Nature, a group of astronomers led by Michael Parker at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, report their observations of IRAS 13224−3809, a nearby Seyfert galaxy hosting an active galactic nucleus, or AGN. Seyfert galaxies shine intensely in infrared light due to the activity of their supermassive black holes, which are relatively low mass but are accreting at high rates. IRAS 13224−3809 hosts a central supermassive black hole weighing about 6,000,000 times the mass of our Sun.

Parker and his coauthors studied observations of IRAS 13224−3809 taken with the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission [ESA/XMM-Newton] over the course of 17 days and with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array [NASA/NuSTAR] over the course of six days. They observed X-ray variability on scales of minutes to weeks.

ESA/XMM Newton

NASA/NuSTAR

By looking at the X-ray spectrum of the source, they were able to determine that this object offers a relatively unhindered view right down into the inner portions of the accretion disk near the black hole itself.

When astronomers “look” at a supermassive black hole, they’re actually observing light from the accretion disk of matter around the black hole, which hasn’t yet fallen past the event horizon and become invisible. Supermassive black holes show variability over time in a variety of wavelengths, including optical light, infrared light, and X-rays. This variability is believed to arise from changes in the accretion disk, such as clumps of matter or outflows of gas and radiation.

IRAS 13224−3809’s black hole shows extraordinary X-ray variability — in fact, it’s the most variable AGN observed at X-ray wavelengths. Parker’s group was able to watch the effects of an ultrafast outflow, which is associated with areas of the accretion disk within a few hundred times the size of the event horizon. Ultrafast outflows, or UFOs, are outflows moving faster than about 6,000 miles per second (10,000 km/s). They’re believed to be triggered by X-ray radiation associated with accretion at the innermost portions of the disk, just a few times the size of the event horizon.

IRAS 13224−3809’s outflow was clocked at 44,000 miles per second (71,000 km/s), or about 0.236 times the speed of light. This puts it in the top 5 percent of UFOs ever observed. What’s more, the power it’s putting out is on par with quasars that are three orders of magnitude more massive.

Because of their immense power, IRAS 13224−3809’s outflows may be strong enough to drive feedback in its host galaxy, just as more massive quasars do in the much more distant universe.

While all black holes are variable, the timescale of variability typically scales with size. This makes sense when you think of variability relating to the accretion disk, which also scales with size. Thus, IRAS 13224−3809 shows much faster variability than the variability observed in quasars, which are similar but much more massive objects. Parker and his group were able to watch IRAS 13224−3809’s X-ray light undergo changes that took only hours, rather than months in a quasar.

Studying IRAS 13224−3809 could thus help astronomers finally start to answer questions about how UFOs and other outflows are created. It could also shed light on how black hole feedback affects the host galaxy. This object’s unique properties would allow studies to be performed more easily and with much shorter observing times than those focused on faraway, slower-acting quasars.

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

From JPL-Caltech: “NuSTAR Finds New Clues to ‘Chameleon Supernova'”

JPL-Caltech

January 24, 2017
Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
Elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

This visible-light image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey shows spiral galaxy NGC 7331, center, where astronomers observed the unusual supernova SN 2014C .

The inset images are from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, showing a small region of the galaxy before the supernova explosion (left) and after it (right). Red, green and blue colors are used for low, medium and high-energy X-rays, respectively.

SDSS Telescope at Apache Point, NM, USA

Fast Facts:

— Supernova SN 2014C dramatically changed its appearance over a year

— It appears SN 2014C threw off a lot of material before it exploded

— The study suggests astronomers should pay attention to the lives of massive stars in the centuries before they explode

“We’re made of star stuff,” astronomer Carl Sagan famously said. Nuclear reactions that happened in ancient stars generated much of the material that makes up our bodies, our planet and our solar system. When stars explode in violent deaths called supernovae, those newly formed elements escape and spread out in the universe.

One supernova in particular is challenging astronomers’ models of how exploding stars distribute their elements. The supernova SN 2014C dramatically changed in appearance over the course of a year, apparently because it had thrown off a lot of material late in its life. This doesn’t fit into any recognized category of how a stellar explosion should happen. To explain it, scientists must reconsider established ideas about how massive stars live out their lives before exploding.

“This ‘chameleon supernova’ may represent a new mechanism of how massive stars deliver elements created in their cores to the rest of the universe,” said Raffaella Margutti, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Margutti led a study about supernova SN 2014C published this week in The Astrophysical Journal.

A supernova mystery

Astronomers classify exploding stars based on whether or not hydrogen is present in the event. While stars begin their lives with hydrogen fusing into helium, large stars nearing a supernova death have run out of hydrogen as fuel. Supernovae in which very little hydrogen is present are called “Type I.” Those that do have an abundance of hydrogen, which are rarer, are called “Type II.”

But SN 2014C, discovered in 2014 in a spiral galaxy about 36 million to 46 million light-years away, is different. By looking at it in optical wavelengths with various ground-based telescopes, astronomers concluded that SN 2014C had transformed itself from a Type I to a Type II supernova after its core collapsed, as reported in a 2015 study led by Dan Milisavljevic at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Initial observations did not detect hydrogen, but, after about a year, it was clear that shock waves propagating from the explosion were hitting a shell of hydrogen-dominated material outside the star.

In the new study, NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) satellite, with its unique ability to observe radiation in the hard X-ray energy range — the highest-energy X-rays — allowed scientists to watch how the temperature of electrons accelerated by the supernova shock changed over time. They used this measurement to estimate how fast the supernova expanded and how much material is in the external shell.

NASA/NuSTAR

To create this shell, SN 2014C did something truly mysterious: it threw off a lot of material — mostly hydrogen, but also heavier elements — decades to centuries before exploding. In fact, the star ejected the equivalent of the mass of the sun. Normally, stars do not throw off material so late in their life.

“Expelling this material late in life is likely a way that stars give elements, which they produce during their lifetimes, back to their environment,” said Margutti, a member of Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

NASA’s Chandra and Swift observatories were also used to further paint the picture of the evolution of the supernova.

NASA/Chandra Telescope

NASA/SWIFT Telescope

The collection of observations showed that, surprisingly, the supernova brightened in X-rays after the initial explosion, demonstrating that there must be a shell of material, previously ejected by the star, that the shock waves had hit.

Challenging existing theories

Why would the star throw off so much hydrogen before exploding? One theory is that there is something missing in our understanding of the nuclear reactions that occur in the cores of massive, supernova-prone stars. Another possibility is that the star did not die alone — a companion star in a binary system may have influenced the life and unusual death of the progenitor of SN 2014C. This second theory fits with the observation that about seven out of 10 massive stars have companions.

The study suggests that astronomers should pay attention to the lives of massive stars in the centuries before they explode. Astronomers will also continue monitoring the aftermath of this perplexing supernova.

“The notion that a star could expel such a huge amount of matter in a short interval is completely new,” said Fiona Harrison, NuSTAR principal investigator based at Caltech in Pasadena. “It is challenging our fundamental ideas about how massive stars evolve, and eventually explode, distributing the chemical elements necessary for life.”

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror archive. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information on NuSTAR, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nustar

http://www.nustar.caltech.edu

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

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

From Space Science Laboratory at UC Berkeley: “NuSTAR – Black Holes Hide in our Cosmic Backyard”

UC Berkeley

Space Science Laboratory

No image caption. No image credit.

NuSTAR

January 12, 2017
Christopher Scholz

Monster black holes sometimes lurk behind gas and dust, hiding from the gaze of most telescopes. But they give themselves away when material they feed on emits high-energy X-rays that NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission can detect. That’s how NuSTAR recently identified two gas-enshrouded supermassive black holes, located at the centers of nearby galaxies.

“These black holes are relatively close to the Milky Way, but they have remained hidden from us until now,” said Ady Annuar, a graduate student at Durham University in the United Kingdom, who presented the results at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas. “They’re like monsters hiding under your bed.”

Both of these black holes are the central engines of what astronomers call “active galactic nuclei,” a class of extremely bright objects that includes quasars and blazars. Depending on how these galactic nuclei are oriented and what sort of material surrounds them, they appear very different when examined with telescopes.

Active galactic nuclei are so bright because particles in the regions around the black hole get very hot and emit radiation across the full electromagnetic spectrum — from low-energy radio waves to high-energy X-rays. However, most active nuclei are believed to be surrounded by a doughnut-shaped region of thick gas and dust that obscures the central regions from certain lines of sight. Both of the active galactic nuclei that NuSTAR recently studied appear to be oriented such that astronomers view them edge-on. That means that instead of seeing the bright central regions, our telescopes primarily see the reflected X-rays from the doughnut-shaped obscuring material.

“Just as we can’t see the sun on a cloudy day, we can’t directly see how bright these active galactic nuclei really are because of all of the gas and dust surrounding the central engine,” said Peter Boorman, a graduate student at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

Boorman led the study of an active galaxy called IC 3639, which is 170 million light years away.

IC 3639, a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus, is seen in this image combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory.

This galaxy contains an example of a supermassive black hole hidden by gas and dust. Researchers analyzed NuSTAR data from this object and compared them with previous observations from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Japanese-led Suzaku satellite.

NASA/Chandra Telescope

JAXA/Suzaku satellite

The findings from NuSTAR, which is more sensitive to higher energy X-rays than these observatories, confirm the nature of IC 3639 as an active galactic nucleus that is heavily obscured, and intrinsically much brighter than observed.

Researchers analyzed NuSTAR data from this object and compared them with previous observations from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite. NuSTAR also provided the first precise measurement of how much material is obscuring the central engine of IC 3639, allowing researchers to determine how luminous this hidden monster really is.

More surprising is the spiral galaxy that Annuar focused on: NGC 1448.

NGC 1448 (also designated NGC 1457 and ESO 249-16) is a spiral galaxy located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Horologium. It has a prominent disk of young and very bright stars surrounding its small, shining core. The galaxy is receding from us with 1168 kilometers per second.

NGC 1448 has recently been a prolific factory of supernovae, the dramatic explosions that mark the death of stars: after a first one observed in this galaxy in 1983 (SN 1983S), two more have been discovered during the past decade.

Visible as a red dot inside the disc, in the upper right part of the image, is the supernova observed in 2003 (Type II supernova SN 2003hn), whereas another one, detected in 2001 (Type Ia supernova SN 2001el), can be noticed as a tiny blue dot in the central part of the image, just below the galaxy’s core. If captured at the peak of the explosion, a supernova might be as bright as the whole galaxy that hosts it.

A Type Ia supernova is a result from the violent explosion of a white dwarf star. This category of supernovae produces consistent peak luminosity. The stability of this luminosity allows these supernovae to be used as standard candles to measure the distance to their host galaxies because the visual magnitude of the supernovae depends primarily on the distance.

A Type II supernova results from the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star. A star must have at least 8 times, and no more than 40–50 times the mass of the Sun for this type of explosion. It is distinguished from other types of supernova by the presence of hydrogen in its spectrum. Type II supernovae are mainly observed in the spiral arms of galaxies and in H II regions, but not in elliptical galaxies.

This image was obtained using the 8.2-metre telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. It combines exposures taken between July 2002 and the end of November 2003.

ESO/VLT at Cerro Paranal, Chile, ESO/VLT at Cerro Paranal, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level

Credit: ESO

The black hole in its center was only discovered in 2009, even though it is at the center of one of the nearest large galaxies to our Milky Way. By “near,” astronomers mean NGC 1448 is only 38 million light years away (one light year is about 6 trillion miles).

Annuar’s study discovered that this galaxy also has a thick column of gas hiding the central black hole, which could be part of a doughnut-shaped region. X-ray emission from NGC 1448, as seen by NuSTAR and Chandra, suggests for the first time that, as with IC 3639, there must be a thick layer of gas and dust hiding the active black hole in this galaxy from our line of sight.

Researchers also found that NGC 1448 has a large population of young (just 5 million year old) stars, suggesting that the galaxy produces new stars at the same time that its black hole feeds on gas and dust. Researchers used the European Southern Observatory New Technology Telescope to image NGC 1448 at optical wavelengths, and identified where exactly in the galaxy the black hole should be. A black hole’s location can be hard to pinpoint because the centers of galaxies are crowded with stars. Large optical and radio telescopes can help detect light from around black holes so that astronomers can find their location and piece together the story of their growth.

“It is exciting to use the power of NuSTAR to get important, unique information on these beasts, even in our cosmic backyard where they can be studied in detail,” said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror archive. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Founded in the wake of the gold rush by leaders of the newly established 31st state, the University of California’s flagship campus at Berkeley has become one of the preeminent universities in the world. Its early guiding lights, charged with providing education (both “practical” and “classical”) for the state’s people, gradually established a distinguished faculty (with 22 Nobel laureates to date), a stellar research library, and more than 350 academic programs.

From AAS NOVA: “Observing the Sun with NuSTAR”

American Astronomical Society

29 July 2016
Susanna Kohler

A composite image of the Sun showing high-energy X-rays from NuSTAR (blue), low-energy X-rays from Japan’s Hinode spacecraft (green), and extreme ultraviolet light from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (yellow and red). [NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/JAXA]

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a space telescope primarily designed to detect high-energy X-rays from faint, distant astrophysical sources.

NASA/NuSTAR

JAXA/HINODE spacecraft

Recently, however, it’s occasionally been pointing much closer to home, with the goal of solving a few longstanding mysteries about the Sun.

Intensity maps from an observation of a quiet-Sun region near the north solar pole and an active region just below the solar limb. The quiet-Sun data will be searched for small flares that could be heating the solar corona, and the high-altitude emission above the limb may provide clues about particle acceleration. [Adapted from Grefenstette et al. 2016]

An Unexpected Target

Though we have a small fleet of space telescopes designed to observe the Sun, there’s an important gap: until recently, there was no focusing telescope making solar observations in the hard X-ray band (above ~3 keV). Conveniently, there is a tool capable of doing this: NuSTAR.

Though NuSTAR’s primary mission is to observe faint astrophysical X-ray sources, a team of scientists has recently conducted a series of observations in which NuSTAR was temporarily repurposed and turned to focus on the Sun instead.

These observations pose an interesting challenge precisely because of NuSTAR’s extreme sensitivity: pointing at such a nearby, bright source can quickly swamp the detectors. But though the instrument can’t be used to observe the bright flares and outbursts from the Sun, it’s the perfect tool for examining the parts of the Sun we’ve been unable to explore in hard X-rays before now — such as faint flares, or the quiet, inactive solar surface.

In a recently published study led by Brian Grefenstette (California Institute of Technology), the team describes the purpose and initial results of NuSTAR’s first observations of the Sun.

Solar Mysteries

What is NuSTAR hoping to accomplish with its solar observations? There are two main questions that hard X-ray observations may help to answer.

How are particles accelerated in solar flares?
The process of electron acceleration during solar flares is not well understood. When a flare-producing active region is occulted by the solar limb, NuSTAR will able to directly observe the flare loop above the solar surface — which is where that acceleration is thought to happen.
How is the solar corona heated?
The solar corona is a toasty 1–3 million Kelvin — significantly warmer than the ~6000 K solar photosphere. So how is the corona heated? One proposed explanation is that the Sun’s surface constantly emits tiny nanoflares — in active regions, or even in the quiet Sun — that are so faint that we haven’t detected them. But with its high sensitivity, NuSTAR may be able to!

The first NuSTAR full-disk mosaic of the Sun. The checkerboard pattern is an artifact of the detectors being hit by particles from active regions outside of the field of view — a problem which will be reduced as the Sun enters the upcoming quieter part of the solar cycle. [Adapted from Grefenstette et al. 2016]

First Observations

In NuSTAR’s first four observations of the Sun, the team unexpectedly observed a major flare (which unsurprisingly swamped the detectors), watched the emission above an active region that was hidden by the solar limb, stared at a section of quiet Sun near the north solar pole, and composed a full-disk mosaic of the solar surface from 16 12’ x 12’ tiles.

All of these initial observations are currently being carefully analyzed and will be presented in detail in future publications. In the meantime, NuSTAR has demonstrated its effectiveness in detecting faint emission in solar hard X-rays, proving that it will be a powerful tool for heliophysics as well as for astrophysics. We look forward to seeing the future results from this campaign!
Citation

Brian W. Grefenstette et al 2016 ApJ 826 20. doi:10.3847/0004-637X/826/1/20

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From NASA NuSTAR: “Andromeda Galaxy Scanned with High-Energy X-ray Vision”

NuSTAR

January 5, 2016
No writer credit found

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has captured the best high-energy X-ray view yet of a portion of our nearest large, neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. The space mission has observed 40 X-ray binaries — intense sources of X-rays comprised of a black hole or neutron star that feeds off a stellar companion.

The results will ultimately help researchers better understand the role of X-ray binaries in the evolution of our universe. According to astronomers, these energetic objects may play a critical role in heating the intergalactic bath of gas in which the very first galaxies formed.

“Andromeda is the only large spiral galaxy where we can see individual X-ray binaries and study them in detail in an environment like our own,” said Daniel Wik of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who presented the results at the 227th meeting of American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Florida. “We can then use this information to deduce what’s going on in more distant galaxies, which are harder to see.”

Andromeda, also known as M31, can be thought of as the big sister to our own Milky Way galaxy. Both galaxies are spiral in shape, but Andromeda is slightly larger than the Milky Way in size. Lying 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda is relatively nearby in cosmic terms. It can even be seen by the naked eye in dark, clear skies. [It is not mentioned here, but Andromeda and the Milky Way are apparently destined to merge in the distant future.]

Other space missions, such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, have obtained crisper images of Andromeda at lower X-ray energies than the high-energy X-rays detected by NuSTAR.

NASA/Chandra

The combination of Chandra and NuSTAR provides astronomers with a powerful tool for narrowing in on the nature of the X-ray binaries in spiral galaxies.

In X-ray binaries, one member is always a dead star or remnant formed from the explosion of what was once a star much more massive than the sun. Depending on the mass and other properties of the original giant star, the explosion may produce either a black hole or neutron star. Under the right circumstances, material from the companion star can “spill over” its outermost edges and then be caught by the gravity of the black hole or neutron star. As the material falls in, it is heated to blazingly high temperatures, releasing a huge amount of X-rays.

With NuSTAR’s new view of a swath of Andromeda, Wik and colleagues are working on identifying the fraction of X-ray binaries harboring black holes versus neutron stars. That research will help them understand the population as a whole.

“We have come to realize in the past few years that it is likely the lower-mass remnants of normal stellar evolution, the black holes and neutron stars, may play a crucial role in heating of the intergalactic gas at very early times in the universe, around the cosmic dawn,” said Ann Hornschemeier of NASA Goddard, the principal investigator of the NuSTAR Andromeda studies.

“Observations of local populations of stellar-mass-sized black holes and neutron stars with NuSTAR allow us to figure out just how much power is coming out from these systems.”

The new research also reveals how Andromeda may differ from our Milky Way. Fiona Harrison, the principal investigator of the NuSTAR mission, added, “Studying the extreme stellar populations in Andromeda tells us about how its history of forming stars may be different than in our neighborhood.”

Harrison will be presenting the 2015 Rossi Prize lecture at the AAS meeting. The prize, awarded by the AAS’s High-Energy Astrophysics Division, honors physicist Bruno Rossi, an authority on cosmic-ray physics and a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy.

See the full article here .

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NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley ; Columbia University, New York; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif., and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission’s outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA’s Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

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

From JPL-Caltech: “NuSTAR Finds Cosmic Clumpy Doughnut Around Black Hole”

JPL-Caltech

December 17, 2015
Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Galaxy NGC 1068 can be seen in close-up in this view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA/ESA Hubble

NuSTAR’s high-energy X-rays eyes were able to obtain the best view yet into the hidden lair of the galaxy’s central, supermassive black hole.


NASA/NuSTAR

This active black hole is one of the most obscured known, meaning that it is surrounded by extremely thick clouds of gas and dust.

The NuSTAR data revealed that the torus of gas and dust surrounding the black hole, also referred to as a doughnut, is more clumpy than previously thought. doughnuts around active, supermassive black holes were originally proposed in the mid-1980s to be smooth entities. More recently, researchers have been finding that doughnuts are not so smooth but have lumps. NuSTAR’s latest finding shows that this is true for even the thickest of doughnuts.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, California, and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission’s outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California. NASA’s Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

The most massive black holes in the universe are often encircled by thick, doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust. This deep-space doughnut material ultimately feeds and nourishes the growing black holes tucked inside.

Until recently, telescopes weren’t able to penetrate some of these doughnuts, also known as tori.

“Originally, we thought that some black holes were hidden behind walls or screens of material that could not be seen through,” said Andrea Marinucci of the Roma Tre University in Italy, lead author of a new Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society study describing results from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory.

With its X-ray vision, NuSTAR recently peered inside one of the densest of these doughnuts known to surround a supermassive black hole. This black hole lies at the center of a well-studied spiral galaxy called NGC 1068, located 47 million light-years away in the Cetus constellation.

The observations revealed a clumpy, cosmic doughnut.

“The rotating material is not a simple, rounded doughnut as originally thought, but clumpy,” said Marinucci.

Doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust around supermassive black holes were first proposed in the mid-1980s to explain why some black holes are hidden behind gas and dust, while others are not. The idea is that the orientation of the doughnut relative to Earth affects the way we perceive a black hole and its intense radiation. If the doughnut is viewed edge-on, the black hole is blocked. If the doughnut is viewed face-on, the black hole and its surrounding, blazing materials can be detected. This idea is referred to as the unified model because it neatly joins together the different black hole types, based solely upon orientation.

In the past decade, astronomers have been finding hints that these doughnuts aren’t as smoothly shaped as once thought. They are more like defective, lumpy doughnuts that a doughnut shop might throw away.

The new discovery is the first time this clumpiness has been observed in an ultra-thick doughnut, and supports the idea that this phenomenon may be common. The research is important for understanding the growth and evolution of massive black holes and their host galaxies.

“We don’t fully understand why some supermassive black holes are so heavily obscured, or why the surrounding material is clumpy,” said co-author Poshak Gandhi of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. “This is a subject of hot research.”

Both NuSTAR and [ESA]XMM-Newton observed the supermassive black hole in NGC 1068 simultaneously on two occasions between 2014 to 2015.

ESA/XMM-Newton

On one of those occasions, in August 2014, NuSTAR observed a spike in brightness. NuSTAR observes X-rays in a higher-energy range than XMM-Newton, and those high-energy X-rays can uniquely pierce thick clouds around the black hole. The scientists say the spike in high-energy X-rays was due to a clearing in the thickness of the material entombing the supermassive black hole.

“It’s like a cloudy day, when the clouds partially move away from the sun to let more light shine through,” said Marinucci.

NGC 1068 is well known to astronomers as the first black hole to give birth to the unification idea. “But it is only with NuSTAR that we now have a direct glimpse of its black hole through such clouds, albeit fleeting, allowing a better test of the unification concept,” said Marinucci.

The team says that future research will address the question of what causes the unevenness in doughnuts. The answer could come in many flavors. It’s possible that a black hole generates turbulence as it chomps on nearby material. Or, the energy given off by young stars could stir up turbulence, which would then percolate outward through the doughnut. Another possibility is that the clumps may come from material falling onto the doughnut. As galaxies form, material migrates toward the center, where the density and gravity is greatest. The material tends to fall in clumps, almost like a falling stream of water condensing into droplets as it hits the ground.

“We’d like to figure out if the unevenness of the material is being generated from outside the doughnut, or within it,” said Gandhi.

“These coordinated observations with NuSTAR and XMM-Newton show yet again the exciting science possible when these satellites work together,” said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

See the full article here.

Another simpler view of NGC 1068 from Hubble:

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

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

From JPL-Caltech: “NASA, ESA Telescopes Give Shape to Furious Black Hole Winds”

JPL-Caltech

February 19, 2015
Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Felicia Chou
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0257
felicia.chou@nasa.gov

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist’s conception. New data from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton telescopes show that these winds, which contain gases of highly ionized atoms, blow in a nearly spherical fashion, emanating in every direction, as shown in the artwork. The findings rule out the possibility that the winds blow in narrow beams.

NASA/NuSTAR

ESA/XMM-Newton

With the shape and extent of the winds known, the researchers were able to determine the winds’ strength. The high-speed winds are powerful enough to shut down star formation throughout a galaxy.

The artwork is based on an image of the Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 101) taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA/ESA Hubble

The galaxy Messier 101 (M101, also known as NGC 5457 and also nicknamed the Pinwheel Galaxy) lies in the northern circumpolar constellation, Ursa Major (The Great Bear), at a distance of about 21 million light-years from Earth. This is one of the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has been released from Hubble. The galaxy’s portrait is actually composed of 51 individual Hubble exposures, in addition to elements from images from ground-based photos [CFHT image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum NOAO image: George Jacoby, Bruce Bohannan, Mark Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSF.

NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission’s outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California. NASA’s Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

This plot of data from two space telescopes, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton determines for the first time the shape of ultra-fast winds from supermassive black holes, or quasars. The winds blow in every direction, in a nearly spherical fashion, coming from both sides of a galaxy (only one side is shown here).

The plot shows the brightness of X-ray light from an extremely luminous quasar called PDS 456, with the highest-energy rays on the right. XMM-Newton sees lower-energy X-rays, and NuSTAR, higher. XMM Newton had previously observed the extremely luminous quasar, called PDS 456, on its own in 2001. At that time, it had measured the X-rays up to an energy level of 11 kiloelectron volts. From those data, researchers detected a dip in the X-ray light, called an absorption feature (see dip in plot). The dip is caused by iron atoms — which are carried by the winds along with other matter — absorbing the X-ray light of a particular energy. What’s more, the absorption feature is ‘blueshifted,” meaning that the winds are speeding toward us (like a train’s whistle shifting to higher frequencies as it races toward you).

In other words, the 2001 XMM-Newton data had told researchers that at least some of the winds were blowing toward us — but they didn’t reveal whether those winds were confined to a narrow beam along our line of sight, or were blowing in all directions. That’s because XMM-Newton had only detected absorption features, which by definition occur in front of a light source, in this case, the quasar. To probe what was happening to at sides of the quasar, the astronomers needed to find a different type of feature called an emission feature. These occur when iron scatters X-ray light at a particular energy in all directions, not only toward the observer.

Enter NuSTAR to the X-ray astronomy scene, a high-energy X-ray telescope that was launched in 2012. NuSTAR and XMM-Newton teamed up to observe PDS 456 simultaneously in 2013 and 2014. The results are shown in this plot. NuSTAR data are represented as orange circles and XMM-Newton as blue squares. The NuSTAR data reveal the baseline of the “continuum” quasar light (see gray line) — or what the quasar would look like without any winds. What stands out is the bump to the left of the dips. That’s an iron emission signature, the telltale sign that the black hole winds blow to the sides and in all directions.

XMM-Newton might have seen the emission feature before, but the feature couldn’t be identified until NuSTAR’s elucidated the baseline quasar light. For example, had the X-ray winds been confined to a beam, then NuSTAR would have seen more brightness at the higher end of the X-ray spectrum, and there would have been no iron emission feature.

The results demonstrate that, in some cases, two telescopes are better than one at solving tricky problems. By observing the entire X-ray energy range, the astronomers were able to get a more complete picture of what is happening around the quasar.

“We know black holes in the centers of galaxies can feed on matter, and this process can produce winds. This is thought to regulate the growth of the galaxies,” said Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. Harrison is the principal investigator of NuSTAR and a co-author on a new paper about these results appearing in the journal Science. “Knowing the speed, shape and size of the winds, we can now figure out how powerful they are.”

Supermassive black holes blast matter into their host galaxies, with X-ray-emitting winds traveling at up to one-third the speed of light. In the new study, astronomers determined PDS 456, an extremely bright black hole known as a quasar more than 2 billion light-years away, sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns.

“Now we know quasar winds significantly contribute to mass loss in a galaxy, driving out its supply of gas, which is fuel for star formation,” said the study’s lead author, Emanuele Nardini of Keele University in England.

“This is a great example of the synergy between XMM-Newton and NuSTAR,” said Norbert Schartel, XMM-Newton project scientist at ESA. “The complementarity of these two X-ray observatories is enabling us to unveil previously hidden details about the powerful side of the universe.”

“For an astronomer, studying PDS 456 is like a paleontologist being given a living dinosaur to study,” said study co-author Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “We are able to investigate the physics of these important systems with a level of detail not possible for those found at more typical distances, during the ‘Age of Quasars.'”

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

See the full article here .

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

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

From RAS: “Universe’s hidden supermassive black holes revealed” From July but Well Worth Your Time

Royal Astronomical Society

09 July 2015
Dr Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035
rm@ras.org.uk

Ms Anita Heward
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7756 034 243
anitaheward@btinternet.com

Dr Sam Lindsay
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7957 566 861
sl@ras.org.uk

Durham University Marketing and Communications Office
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 6075
communications.team@durham.ac.uk

Astronomers have found evidence for a large population of hidden supermassive black holes in the Universe. Using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite observatory, the team of international scientists detected the high-energy x-rays from five supermassive black holes previously clouded from direct view by dust and gas. The findings were presented today at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting, at Venue Cymru, in Llandudno, Wales (Monday 6 July).

NASA/Nu-STAR Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The research, led by astronomers at Durham University, UK, supports the theory that potentially millions more supermassive black holes exist in the Universe, but are hidden from view.

The scientists pointed NuSTAR at nine candidate hidden supermassive black holes that were thought to be extremely active at the centre of galaxies, but where the full extent of this activity was potentially obscured from view.

High-energy x-rays found for five of the black holes confirmed that they had been hidden by dust and gas. The five were much brighter and more active than previously thought as they rapidly feasted on surrounding material and emitted large amounts of radiation.

A Hubble Space Telescope colour image of one of the nine galaxies targeted by NuSTAR. The high energy X-rays detected by NuSTAR revealed the presence of an extremely active supermassive black hole at the galaxy centre, deeply buried under a blanket of gas and dust. Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA.

NASA/ESA Hubble

Such observations were not possible before NuSTAR, which launched in 2012 and is able to detect much higher energy x-rays than previous satellite observatories.

Lead author George Lansbury, a postgraduate student in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, at Durham University, said: “For a long time we have known about supermassive black holes that are not obscured by dust and gas, but we suspected that many more were hidden from our view.

“Thanks to NuSTAR for the first time we have been able to clearly see these hidden monsters that are predicted to be there, but have previously been elusive because of their ‘buried’ state.

“Although we have only detected five of these hidden supermassive black holes, when we extrapolate our results across the whole Universe then the predicted numbers are huge and in agreement with what we would expect to see.”

Daniel Stern, the project scientist for NuSTAR at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, added: “High-energy X-rays are more penetrating than low-energy X-rays, so we can see deeper into the gas burying the black holes. NuSTAR allows us to see how big the hidden monsters are and is helping us learn why only some black holes appear obscured.”

The research was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

An artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole, actively feasting on its surroundings. The central black hole is hidden from direct view by a thick layer of encircling gas and dust.

See the full article here .

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The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.