The Bubble Nebula
(Image credit: Brad Ehrhorn/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF)
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Discovery of the Musket Ball Cluster
Using a combination of powerful observatories in space and on the ground, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have observed a violent collision between two galaxy clusters in which so-called normal matter has been wrenched apart from dark matter through a violent collision between two galaxy clusters.
The newly discovered galaxy cluster is called DLSCL J0916.2+2951. It is similar to the Bullet Cluster, the first system in which the separation of dark and normal matter was observed, but with some important differences. The newly discovered system has been nicknamed the “Musket Ball Cluster” because the cluster collision is older and slower than the Bullet Cluster.
Finding another system that is further along in its evolution than the Bullet Cluster gives scientists valuable insight into a different phase of how galaxy clusters grow and change after major collisions. Researchers used the data from the observations to show that hot, X-ray bright gas in the Musket Ball Cluster has been clearly separated from dark matter and galaxies.
In this composite image, the hot gas observed with Chandra is colored red, and the galaxies in the optical image from Hubble appear as mostly white and yellow. The location of the majority of the matter in the cluster (dominated by dark matter) is colored blue. When the red and the blue regions overlap, the result is purple as seen in the image. The Musket Ball Cluster is observed about 700 million years after the collision and is located about 5.2 billion light years away from Earth.
(via abcstarstuff)
Astronomers ‘Flip’ Over Cartwheel Galaxy (NASA, Chandra, 1/6/06) by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
This image combines data from four different observatories: the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple); the Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite (ultraviolet/blue); the Hubble Space Telescope (visible/green); the Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared/red). The unusual shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy is likely due to a collision with one of the smaller galaxies on the lower left several hundred million years ago.
The smaller galaxy produced compression waves in the gas of the Cartwheel as it plunged through it. These compression waves trigger bursts of star formation. The most recent star burst has lit up the Cartwheel’s rim, which has a diameter larger than that of the Milky Way galaxy, with millions of bright young stars.
When the most massive of these stars explode as supernovas, they leave behind neutron stars and black holes. Some of these neutron stars and black holes have nearby companion stars, and have become powerful sources of X-rays as they pull matter off their companions.
The brightest X-ray sources are likely black holes with companion stars, and appear as the white dots that lie along the rim of the X-ray image. The Cartwheel contains an exceptionally large number of these black hole binary X-ray sources, because many massive stars formed in the rim.
Image credit: Composite: NASA/JPL/Caltech/P.Appleton et al. X-ray: NASA/CXC/A.Wolter & G.Trinchieri et al.
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Supernova Factory
Image courtesy T. A. Rector/UAA, H. Schweiker/WIYN, and NOAO/NSF
Stars glitter in the spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 6946, seen in a recently released picture from Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
Over the past century, eight supernovae have been identified in the arms of this galaxy, according to Kitt Peak, making NGC 6946 one of the most prolific known galaxies for stellar explosions.
(Related: “New Supernova Found ‘Next Door’—Getting Brighter.”)
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Wow is this the best pic of pleiades?
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I am back.
