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Space photo of the day for July 14, 2025

Space photo of the day for July 14, 2025

Yahoo18-07-2025
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A recent unexpected frost graced high-altitude peaks in Chile, dusting the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope with a delicate layer of snow.
What is it?
The 13.4 foot (4.1 meter) telescope has been a major hub for researchers in the Southern Hemisphere using optical and near-infrared astronomy to study the stars. According to NOIRLab, the telescope was initiated in 1987 by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It's run by an international consortium which includes Brazil, Chile, Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina.
Only a short distance away on the same peak is the Gemini South telescope, which also looks at the stars in both visible and infrared wavelengths.
Where is it?
The SOAR Telescope sits on the peak of Cerro Pachón, part of the Chilean Andes mountain range.
Why is it amazing?
Recently, a rare winter storm swept across the Atacama desert, bringing snow to the driest place on Earth. While the event created a beautiful landscape, its impact varied among the observatories located in the remote part of Chile.
For the SOAR telescope, high up in the Chilean Andes, the snow was a gentle dusting that coated the observatory, making for some stunning images.
However, lower down in elevation, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) facility at Chajnantor Plateu faced more severe conditions, forcing all scientific operations to be suspended since June 26, 2025. ALMA's remote location and reliance on sensitive electronics made it especially vulnerable to weather extremes, even brief ones.
Want to learn more?
You can read more about telescopes like SOAR and astronomy happening in the Atacama desert.
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Scientists hit quantum computer error rate of 0.000015% — a world record achievement that could lead to smaller and faster machines
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Rogue black hole found terrorizing unfortunate star in distant galaxy
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When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A rogue, middle-mass black hole has been spotted disrupting an orbiting star in the halo of a distant galaxy, and it's all thanks to the observing powers of the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. However, exactly what the black hole is doing to the star remains in question as there are conflicting X-ray measurements. Black holes come in different size classes. At the smaller end of the scale are the stellar-mass black holes born in the ashes of supernova explosions. At the top end of the scale are the supermassive black holes, which can grow to have many millions or billions of times the mass of our sun, lurking in the hearts of galaxies. In between those categories are intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH), which have mass ranging from hundreds up to 100,000 solar masses, or thereabouts. 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This would potentially explain the X-ray light curve: The emission from 2009 was as the star was nearing perihelion, while the peak in 2012 was during perihelion, and the latest measurements in 2023 would be when the star was farthest from the black hole and not feeling its effects so much. We might then expect another outburst of X-rays during its next perihelion, whenever that might be. However, there's an alternative hypothesis: The star may have been stripped apart a piece at a time, forming a stream of material around the black hole. When Chandra first detected the X-ray emission from the tidal disruption event, this stream was just beginning to wrap back on itself, the self-intersection giving rise to shock-heating that produced X-rays. Then, the 2012 measurements would have been of a fully-fledged hot accretion disk of gas, the star by now completely ripped apart. The material within this disk would have spiraled into the black hole's maw, thus depleting the disk, which would explain why it is much less luminous in X-rays in 2023. Picking out the correct scenario apart will require further surveillance. "If the IMBH is eating a star, how long does it take to swallow the star's gas? In 2009, HLX-1 was fairly bright. Then, in 2012, it was about 100 times brighter, and then it went down again," Roberto Soria of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), who is a co-author of a new study describing the observations of HLX-1, said in the statement. "So now we need to wait and see if it's flaring multiple times, or if there was a beginning, a peak, and now it's just going to go down all the way until it disappears." Making new observations of an IMBH such as HLX-1 is key to better understanding the role they play in the black hole ecosystem. One model suggests that supermassive black holes might form and grow through the merger of many IMBH, but nobody knows how common intermediate-mass black holes are in the universe. "So if we are lucky, we're going to find more free-floating black holes suddenly becoming X-ray bright because of a tidal disruption event," said Soria. "If we can do a statistical study, this will tell us how many of these IMBHs there are, how often they disrupt a star, [and] how bigger galaxies have grown by assembling smaller galaxies." RELATED STORIES — Rogue black hole spotted on its own for the first time — Astronomers may have discovered the closest black holes to Earth — Hubble Telescope sees wandering black hole slurping up stellar spaghetti Alas, Chandra, XMM-Newton and Hubble all have small fields of view, meaning that they only see small patches of the sky. Because we don't know where the next tidal disruption event might take place, the chances of our space telescopes looking in the right place at the right time are slim. In essence, Chandra got lucky back in 2009. Fortunately, help is now on hand. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory comes fully online later this year to begin a 10-year all-sky survey, and spotting the flares of tidal disruption events will be a piece of cake for it. Once it finds such an event, Hubble and Chandra will know where to look and can follow up on it. IMBHs have remained mostly hidden for now, but their time in the shadows is coming to an end. The findings were published on April 11 in The Astrophysical Journal.

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