Carolyn Collins Petersen, Author at Universe Today

July 6, 2024July 6, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Webb Looks at One of the Best Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Ever Discovered

A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. Courtesy: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg

It looks like a distant ring with three sparkly jewels, but the Webb telescope’s (JWST) most recent image is really the view of a distant quasar lensed by a nearby elliptical galaxy. The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) looked at the faint apparition during a study of dark matter and its distribution in the Universe.

July 3, 2024July 6, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

More Evidence that the Kuiper Belt is Bigger Than We Thought

The Kuiper Belt was named in honor of Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who postulated a reservoir of icy bodies beyond Neptune. The first Kuiper Belt object was discovered in 1992. We now know of more than a thousand objects there, and it's estimated it's home to more than 100,000 asteroids and comets there over 62 miles (100 km) across. Credit: JHUAPL

As the New Horizons spacecraft continues its epic journey to explore the Kuiper Belt, it has a study partner back here on Earth. The Subaru Telescope on the Big Island of Hawaii is deploying its Hyper Suprime-Cam imager to look at the Kuiper Belt along the spacecraft’s trajectory. Its observations show that the Kuiper Belt extends farther than scientists thought.

July 2, 2024July 2, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Mysterious Swirls on the Moon Could Be Explained by Underground Magma

This is an image of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl on the Moon, supplied by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credits: NASA LRO WAC science team

In the latest chapter of “The Mystery of the Lunar Swirls,” planetary scientists have a new theory to explain these odd markings on the Moon’s surface. It invokes underground magmas and strange magnetic anomalies.

June 30, 2024June 30, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Galaxies Filled With Old Stars Seen Shortly After the Big Bang

Astronomers used JWST to investigate three mysterious objects in the very early Universe. These little red dots contain extremely ancient stars and supermassive black holes. Courtesy JWST/Penn State University.

How can young galaxies in the early Universe have ancient stars? That’s the question a team of astronomers set out to answer using JWST as a probe. They first spotted the massive objects in 2022 and are still working to explain what these things are.

June 29, 2024June 29, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Earliest Supermassive Black Holes Were “Shockingly Normal”

Artist's impression of a quasar core. Quasars are powered by interactions between supermassive black holes and their accretion disks at the hearts of galaxies. JWST observed one in infrared light to reveal its feeding mechanism. Courtesy T. Mueller/MPIA.

The early Universe is a puzzling and—in many ways—still-unknown place. The first billion years of cosmic history saw the explosive creation of stars and the growth of the first galaxies. It’s also a time when the earliest known black holes appeared to grow very massive quickly. Astronomers want to know how they grew and why they feed more like “normal” recent supermassive black holes (SMBH).

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Seeing Both Sides of the Sun at the Same Time

Solar Orbiter's view of a solar outburst from AR3664 on May 21st, 2024. The views are in two different wavelengths of ultraviolet light. Courtesy: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team

As everybody who saw May’s spectacular auroral displays knows, the Sun is in its most active period in 11 years. The active region sunspot group that unleased the giant X-class flare rotated around the Sun, away from our direct view. But, that isn’t keeping the Solar Orbiter from spotting what’s happening with it and other active regions as they travel around on the Sun.

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Cepheid Variables are the Bedrock of the Cosmic Distance Ladder. Astronomers are Trying to Understand them Better

One of the brightest Cepheid variable stars, RS Puppis. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-Hubble/Europe Collaboration

One of the most fundamental questions astronomers ask about an object is “What’s its distance?” For very faraway objects, they use classical Cepheid variable stars as “distance rulers”. Astronomers call these pulsating stars “standard candles”. Now there’s a whole team of them precisely clocking their speeds along our line of sight.

June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Black Hole Bullies Shut Down Star Formation in Their Galaxies

An artist’s impression of a quasar wind (in light blue) being launched off of the accretion disk (red-orange) around a supermassive black hole. Inset at right are two spectra from the quasar SBS 1408+544, showing the leftward shift of absorbed light that revealed the acceleration of gas pushed by quasar winds. Image: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss, Catherine Grier and the SDSS collaboration

A supermassive black hole in the heart of a galaxy is the ultimate 800-pound gorilla of astrophysics. Not only do the most active ones suck in material and hide it away, but their accretion disks also blast strong quasar winds out to space. Those winds push things around, and in the process, they sometimes shut down star formation.

June 23, 2024June 23, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers See a Black Hole Wake Up from its Ancient Slumber

The galaxy SDSS1335+0728 (shown here) suddenly started shining brighter than ever before and was classified as having an active galactic nucleus, powered by a massive black hole in the galaxy’s core. This is the first time the awakening of a massive black hole has been observed in real time. This artist’s impression shows the growing disc of material being pulled in by the black hole as it feeds on the gas available in its surroundings, making the galaxy light up. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser — The galaxy SDSS1335+0728 (shown here) suddenly started shining brighter than ever before -- waking up and giving off strong radiation. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Four years ago, the supermassive black hole hidden in the heart of galaxy SDSS1335+0728 roared awake and announced its presence with a blast of radiation. It marks the first time astronomers witnessed a sudden activation of a supermassive black hole in real time.

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A New Way to Prove if Primordial Black Holes Contribute to Dark Matter

Depiction of a primordial black hole forming amid a sea of hot, color-charged quarks and gluons, a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Credits:Credit: Image by Ka?a Bradonji?

The early Universe was a strange place. Early in its history—in the first quintillionth of a second—the entire cosmos was nothing more than a stunningly hot plasma. And, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this soup of quarks and gluons was accompanied by the formation of weird little primordial black holes (PHBs). It’s entirely possible that these long-vanished PHBs could have been the root of dark matter.