Latest news with #DarkEnergyCamera
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This Eerie Crack of Darkness in The Sky Is Hiding a Glittering Secret
"There is a crack," Leonard Cohen croons, "in everything; that's how the light gets in." He was not referring specifically to a structure in space called Circinus West, but the words apply. The object looks, to our eyes, like nothing so much as an eerie crack, a void in space-time where darkness bleeds through. Its true nature is significantly more marvelous: it's where light is literally being born, a thick, dark cloud of molecular material in space from which new stars are forming. The cloud, called a dark nebula, is so dense that the hot, bright, baby stars within are hidden from view – but hints of their presence are there, if you know how to look. New images from the US Department of Energy's Dark Energy Camera show them in stunning detail. Nebulae come in different categories, depending on how they are lit. Reflection nebulae, such as the Pleiades nebula, are those that reflect the light of the stars around them. Emission nebulae are the ones that tend to get the most attention; they emit their own light in optical wavelengths, created by the ionization of the particles within them, mostly due to ultraviolet irradiation from nearby stars. Dark nebulae are exactly what they sound like. They're very thick and dense, neither emitting nor reflecting light in optical wavelengths, but absorbing and scattering it instead. They look like holes in space, anomalous gaps in the sea of stars that makes up the cosmos. But inside their thick and dusty hearts can be found the perfect conditions for star formation. Baby stars are born from overdensities in already dense, dusty, gassy environments. A knot in the gas will become so dense that it collapses under gravity; the spinning, collapsed knot becomes the seed of a baby star, greedily slurping up mass from the abundance of material around it. Baby stars are messy eaters, and astronomers believe that not all of the material slurped by the protostar ends up adding to its mass. Some of it is instead diverted away from the star, along its external magnetic field lines, and accelerated towards the poles. When it reaches the poles, it is launched away at high speeds as collimated jets. These jets punch into the surrounding material, their high temperatures turning it into plasma. This produces two glowing lobes on either side of the protostar, which is still shrouded by a thick cloud of dust and gas. But we can see the jets and the lobes. This short-lived phase of a baby star's evolution is known as a Herbig-Haro object, and they are pretty rare. Circinus West, which sits about 2,500 light-years away and measures about 180 light-years across, is home to a number of Herbig-Haro objects, whose glowing lobes peek through the darkness. Other signs of star formation include the cavities carved out by growing stars, which generate powerful protostellar winds in addition to the jets, and gleams of light. Eventually, the winds and jets will push away the remaining material, cutting off stellar growth, but allowing the light of the star to stream freely through the Universe. But this current, crucial stage of star formation is one that is somewhat mysterious to us, cocooned as it must be in the dark cloud from which the stars are born. Images like the new observations of Circinus West can help astronomers understand how baby stars are born, and how their tantrums shape the Universe. You can download wallpaper-sized versions of the new Dark Energy Camera image on the NOIRLab website. Almost a Quarter of Moon Impact Debris Eventually Hits Earth NASA Reveals First-of-Its-Kind Image of Mars Rover Seen From Space Study Suggests Life Emerges Rapidly in Earth-Like Conditions
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers gaze into 'dark nebula' 60 times the size of the solar system (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have discovered a dense stellar nursery packed with infant stars in a vast "cosmic ink blot."The team made the discovery using one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world: the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The dark shadow overlaid on a starry background is known as the Circinus West molecular cloud. Circinus West is a cold, dense cloud of gas and dust that stretches out for 180 light-years, around 60 times the size of our solar system. Nebulas like this are so dense that light cannot pass through them, resulting in their dark, ink-like appearance and the fitting nickname "dark nebulas." With a mass around 250,000 times that of the sun, the Circinus West molecular cloud, located 2500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Circinus, is jam-packed with the raw material for star formation. Despite being a "dark nebula," the Circinus West molecular cloud isn't so dark that it can completely hide its young stellar population, however. The team zoomed in on this region with the powerful DECam instrument to see these stellar infants and their associated phenomena in greater detail. One dead giveaway of newborn stars is occasional pockets of light punctuating the inky tendrils of the molecular cloud. These are created during star formation when so-called "protostars" — stars that haven't yet gathered enough material to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores — launch jets of material into space, carving cavities in the dense molecular gas and find these high-energy outflows are easier to see than the protostars that launch them. That is because protostars are still wrapped in natal blankets of gas and dust from which they continue to gather mass on their journey to becoming main-sequence stars like the sun. This makes these outflows and cavities a great indicator of the location of protostars. Multiple outflows can be seen in the central black tendril of the Circinus West molecular cloud, named the Cir-MMS the heart of the Cir-MMS region is a large cavity that is being cleared by radiation blasting out for an infant star. Another stellar newborn is clearing a similar cavity at the bottom left of the Cir-MMS region. The abundance of "Herbig-Haro" (HH) objects in Circinus West is another indication of active star formation. HH objects are glowing red patches of nebulous gas and dust commonly found near newborn stars. They are created when fast-moving gas ejected by stars slams into slower-moving surrounding gas. Circinus West is packed with such objects, punctuating the dark lanes of gas and dust. It isn't just newborn stars that populate Circinus West. This molecular cloud is also home to many stars at the other end of the stellar cycle of life and nebulas, seen by the DECam in Circinus West as red blotches, are the remains of red giant stars, stellar bodies that have reached the end of their hydrogen supplies and their main sequence lifetimes. At this point, they shed their outer layers, with this material dispersing and cooling, creating a planetary nebula (which somewhat confusingly actually have nothing to do with planets). Related Stories: — James Webb Space Telescope investigates the origins of 'failed stars' in the Flame Nebula — Running Chicken Nebula glows in gorgeous new image from Very Large Telescope in Chile — Earth-size planet discovered around cool red dwarf star shares its name with a biscuit The team behind this research hopes that by studying the infant and aging stars of Circinus West and their outflows can reveal more about how they shape their immediate environments Ultimately, this could reveal the processes that govern the evolution of galaxies like the Milky Way.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
High-school student accidentally discovers black hole 'light echo' twice as wide as the Milky Way
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. ANAHEIM, Calif. — Long after the black hole in the center of a galaxy sputters out, you can still see its ghost lingering in surrounding gas clouds aglow with leftover radiation, like wisps of smoke emanating from an already extinguished flame. Astronomers call these cosmic ghosts "light echoes" — and that's what high-school junior Julian Shapiro found while scanning the cosmos for supernova remnants. "There are these outer regions of gas being ionized by a supermassive black hole, which results in this echo," Shapiro said at a March 20 presentation here at the 2025 American Physical Society (APS) Global Physics Summit. Shapiro, 17, is a student at The Dalton School in New York City. But in between classes and scoping out potential colleges, he's also an independent astronomer who presents at global conferences like this week's APS meeting. Originally, Shapiro began sifting through the DECaPS2 survey — an inventory of the southern galactic plane from the Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile — to find the debris of exploding stars in supernova remnants and planetary nebulas. But after zeroing in on one such object, he found its structure didn't match the wispy filaments characteristic of a supernova remnant, nor did it show evidence of a supernova at its center. "It was a real surprise to stumble upon this," Shapiro told Live Science. Related: High school students who came up with 'impossible' proof of Pythagorean theorem discover 9 more solutions to the problem The object, which he believes to be a light echo, stands in a field of potential supermassive black holes. Using measurements from the Southern African Large Telescope, he found high contents of oxygen and ionized sulfur sprinkled into the region — both indicators of shocked material. All of these signs suggest that the object is the afterglow of a now-dormant black hole, which once spewed radiation that ionized the surrounding gas, causing it to emit light even after the black hole quieted down. Shapiro currently pegs the light echo at about 150,000 to 250,000 light-years in diameter — about 1.5 to two times the width of the entire Milky Way galaxy. And if his estimates hold up, he thinks it could be a viable candidate for the largest light echo ever discovered. "This object covers a large area in the sky, which makes it a bit easier to get in-depth images of," Shapiro said. According to Sasha Plavin, a black hole researcher at Harvard University who was not involved in the research, echoes like the one Shapiro discovered can help us learn more about how black holes behave in the hearts of galaxies. "I really like how carefully [Shapiro] looked into these images," Plavin told Live Science. "These galactic events are always of interest, and I think these echoes are a great way of studying them." Plavin is also interested in seeing how this new light echo measures up to others — whether it occurred faster or slower than existing examples. "Putting this discovery in a wider context could be useful in the future," he said. RELATED STORIES —Unproven Einstein theory of 'gravitational memory' may be real after all, new study hints —Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This James Webb Space Telescope discovery might blow your mind —Evidence for Stephen Hawking's unproven black hole theory may have just been found — at the bottom of the sea As Shapiro continues studying the light echo, he hopes to learn more about its composition with measurements of its different regions. But in the meantime, he's excited to continue contributing to black hole science — even if he came across it by accident. "My involvement in this area of research came as a bit of a surprise to me," he said. "But I hope this object, in particular, helps expand the knowledge of galaxy activities that we don't have too great of an understanding of."
