Latest news with #LBT
Scotsman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
LBT & Immortal Onion, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival review: 'ear-opening barrages of sound'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Immortal Onion & LBT, Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh ★★★★ This double bill gave a vivid insight into at least one direction jazz is taking in Europe, while perhaps raising the question – when jazz meets techno and electronica, can we still call it jazz? Let's not go there: in the event, however, both trios generated ear-opening barrages of sound, electronic or otherwise. Immortal Onion | Michał Drygalski From Gdansk, Immortal Onion opened their Edinburgh debut with a sizzle of electronic keyboards and explosive drumming. Playing largely from their current album, Technaturalism, Tomir Śpiolek on keyboards, Ziemowit Klimek on Moog synthesiser and drummer Wojtek Warmijak created jagged, ever-shifting soundscapes, cinematic keyboard cascades vying with hoots and juddering bass from the Moog, all riding on Warmijak's drum attack. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With frequent tempo changes, you never quite knew what was coming next – a spooky, sci-fi-sounding Moog melody or a foghorn-like bass outburst. If Immortal Onion's switched-on approach might fuel a rave, the multi-award-winning LBT from Munich embrace techno utterly, but with conventional jazz piano trio instrumentation. 'It's techno. You dance to it, so feel free,' announced pianist Leo Betzl to the largely standing audience (some of whom obliged, animatedly), before striking up a, repetitive, staccato figure on damped piano keys (concert grand this time) with double-bassist Maximilian Hirning and drummer Sebastian Wolf working up the kind of fiercely unremitting beat that characterised their set. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
CTV News
08-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Astronomers discover ‘fossil galaxy' 3 billion light-years away
An international team of researchers, using the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, has discovered a faraway galaxy that has remained unchanged for billions of years, like a cosmic fossil. (LBT Observatory via CNN Newsource) A galaxy that has remained unchanged for 7 billion years — a rarity in the universe — has been observed by astronomers, offering a glimpse into cosmic history and adding to an enigmatic collection of objects called relics or 'fossil galaxies.' These space oddities are galaxies that, after an initial phase of intense star formation, escape their expected evolutionary path. While other galaxies expand and merge with one another, the fossil galaxies remain virtually inactive. Like celestial time capsules, they provide a snapshot into the ancient universe and allow astronomers to examine the mechanism of galaxy formation. The newly discovered fossil galaxy — named KiDS J0842+0059 — is about 3 billion light-years from Earth, making it both the most distant and the first of its kind observed outside the local universe, the region of space closest to Earth that is approximately 1 billion light-years in radius. It was found by a team of astronomers led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), using high-resolution imaging from the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. 'Relic galaxies, just by chance, did not merge with any other galaxy, remaining more or less intact through time,' said Crescenzo Tortora, a researcher at INAF and first author of a study on the finding published May 31 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 'These objects are very rare because, as time goes on, the probability to merge with another galaxy naturally increases.' Very compact, very massive Astronomers believe that the most massive galaxies form in two phases, according to study coauthor Chiara Spiniello, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK. 'First, there's an early burst of star formation, a very quick and violent activity,' she said. 'We end up having something very compact and small, the progenitor of this relic.' The second phase, she added, is a protracted process during which galaxies that are in close proximity start interacting, merging and eating each other, causing a very dramatic change in their shapes, sizes and star populations. 'We define a relic as an object that missed almost completely this second phase, having formed at least 75% of its mass in the first phase,' Spiniello explained. The telltale feature of fossil galaxies is that they are very old, compact and dense, much more so than our own galaxy. 'They contain (billions) of stars as massive as the sun and they are not forming any new stars — they're doing essentially nothing, and they are the fossil records of the very ancient universe,' she said. 'They formed when the universe was really, really young. And then, for some reasons that we honestly don't understand yet, they did not interact. They didn't merge with other systems. They evolved undisturbed, and they remained as they were.' Fossil galaxies are crucial because they are a direct link to the massive galaxy population that existed billions of years ago, said Michele Cappellari, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford who was not involved with the study. 'As 'living fossils,' they have avoided the chaotic mergers and growth that most other massive galaxies have experienced. Studying them allows us to reconstruct the conditions of the universe in its infancy and understand the initial bursts of star formation,' he said. What caused these galaxies to stop forming stars so abruptly is a major question, he added. 'Evidence from both local and (distant) observations suggests that feedback from supermassive black holes may be responsible,' Cappellari said. 'These black holes can produce powerful winds that expel or heat the gas in a galaxy, preventing further star formation. However, this remains an active area of research.' An uncertain future Scientists initially identified KiDS J0842+0059 in 2018 using the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. That observation revealed that the galaxy was populated by very old stars but only provided an estimate of its mass and size, so a more detailed observation was required to confirm it was a relic. The Large Binocular Telescope used for this confirmation can render very sharp images due to its ability to compensate for atmospheric turbulence, which otherwise can make it difficult for Earth-based telescopes to focus on distant objects. The newly found fossil galaxy joins a group of only a handful of others that have been observed at the same level of detail, the most pristine of which — called NGC 1277 — was confirmed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018. NGC 1277 and KiDS J0842+0059 are very similar, but the latter is much farther away from Earth. It fits the definition of fossil galaxy almost perfectly, according to Spiniello. 'This is what we call an extreme relic,' she said, 'because almost all, or 99.5% of its stars were formed incredibly early on in cosmic time, and the galaxy did absolutely nothing thereafter.' The fossil galaxy has stars and planets, just like our own galaxy, but it is much more dense, Spiniello added. 'There will be many more stars in a tiny, tiny volume, so it'll be super crowded,' she said. 'And it will be much harder to find solar systems like ours, with many planets orbiting around it, just because of the chances of getting companion stars interfering nearby.' KiDS J0842+0059 looks to observers like it did 3 billion years ago, because that's how long it takes for the light coming from the galaxy to reach Earth. Spiniello hypothesized that the relic will likely remain as it is forever, but scientists can't be certain since they still don't know what keeps it from interacting with other galaxies. 'There must be something that prevents them from merging, but without knowing what, we cannot really predict what's going to happen in the future,' Spiniello said. 'One in millions' It is very hard to identify fossil galaxies and confirm their nature, partly because they're relatively rare and small compared with regular galaxies such as the Milky Way, according to Sébastien Comerón, an extragalactic astronomer at the Universidad de La Laguna and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain. The confirmation of a distant relic galaxy is a credit to the search strategies used to identify these objects and of modern instruments, he said. 'Relic galaxies are mysterious,' added Comerón, who was not involved with the study, in an email. 'The fact that a few galaxies are nowadays untouched relics of the first large galaxies needs an explanation.' Astronomers can't say for certain how rare relics are, but Spiniello estimates there might be 'one in millions' among all the galaxies in the universe. The INSPIRE project — which aims to find and catalogue fossil galaxies and spawned the discovery of KiDS J0842+0059 — has already identified several dozen other candidates that are in the pipeline for further scrutiny, Spiniello said. New instruments could make this search even more effective. Both Spiniello and Tortora are excited about Euclid, a European Space Agency telescope launched in 2023 with the goal of exploring dark matter and dark energy that will also be useful for observing fossil galaxies. 'Euclid will be transformational,' Spiniello said, 'because rather than observing one single object at a time, its wide sky survey configuration will cover a lot more. The idea is to find all the galaxies in a patch of sky, and then isolate all the ones that are ultra compact. And if you do that, then you can actually estimate how rare (fossil galaxies) are.' Confirming relic galaxy KiDS J0842+0059 at such a distance is a remarkable achievement, and the future of this field is very promising, Cappellari said in an email. 'With powerful new telescopes like James Webb and Euclid (which produced its first images just a few months ago), and on the ground with advanced adaptive optics, we can expect to find and study more of these relics at even greater distances.'
Economic Times
01-07-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
Dinosaur in the space: Astronomers discover ancient galaxy untouched for 7 billion years
Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of KiDS J0842+0059, a rare, ancient galaxy that has remained virtually unchanged for over 7 billion years. This "cosmic fossil," located 3 billion light-years away, offers a glimpse into the early universe, having experienced minimal interaction with other galaxies. Its pristine state allows researchers to study the formation and evolution of the first galaxies. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of a rare, ancient galaxy that has remained virtually unchanged for over 7 billion years, offering a rare glimpse into the early universe The galaxy , known as KiDS J0842+0059, is being hailed as a 'cosmic fossil' due to its pristine and undisturbed state. Researchers say it has experienced little to no interaction with other galaxies since its formation, allowing it to retain its original structure.A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has managed to remain unchanged by collisions and interactions with other galaxies. That means they can act as pristine time capsules to help astronomers study earlier galaxies.'We have discovered a galaxy that has been 'perfectly preserved' for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day,' said Crescenzo Tortora, co-leader of the research team from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).The findings were made using observations from several leading instruments, including the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which allowed astronomers to confirm the galaxy's compact size and stellar mass, approximately 100 billion times that of the J0842+0059 was first identified in 2018 during the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). More recent high-resolution imaging from LBT provided a clearer picture of the galaxy's structure, ruling out prior uncertainties.'This is the first time that we have been able to do this with such high-resolution data for a galaxy relic so far away,' said Chiara Spiniello, a researcher at the University of Oxford and a member of the research galaxy, located 3 billion light-years from Earth, has shown almost no signs of star formation over billions of years, which is unusual for galaxies of its size. Most galaxies continue to evolve through collisions and mergers, which trigger bursts of new star formation. In contrast, KiDS J0842+0059 appears to have remained dormant and isolated.'Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe,' Tortora said. 'Studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved.'The team compared KiDS J0842+0059 to NGC 1277, another well-known relic galaxy located much closer to Earth in the Perseus Cluster. Both share compact structures and similar characteristics, but KiDS J0842+0059 is far more distant, making it a rare observational researchers hope that future observations, particularly with the upcoming Euclid space telescope, will help identify more fossil galaxies and further refine models of galaxy formation and cosmic evolution.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers discover a galaxy frozen in time for billions of years: 'Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy that is a "cosmic fossil" which has remained "frozen in time" for billions of years. Just as dinosaur fossils here on Earth are used to probe the evolution of life, this cosmic fossil in the form of the galaxy KiDS J0842+0059 could be used to understand cosmic evolution. A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has managed to remain unchanged by collisions and interactions with other galaxies. That means they can act as pristine time capsules to help astronomers study earlier galaxies. Recent research conducted using data from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) has revealed that this galaxy has remained unchanged for around 7 billion years. "We have discovered a galaxy that has been 'perfectly preserved' for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day," team co-leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Crescenzo Dove said in a statement. "Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe: studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved." KiDS J0842+0059, located 3 billion light-years away from Earth, was discovered in 2018 by the KiDS (Kilo Degree Survey). Images of the galaxy provided by the Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) allowed astronomers to measure the size and mass of KiDS J0842+0059. These measurements were perfected by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its X-Shooter instrument. This revealed that KiDS J0842+0059 has a stellar mass of around one hundred billion times that of the sun, but is more compact than similar mass galaxies. It was also discovered that KiDS J0842+0059 has lacked star formation for much of its life. All this hinted toward it being a fossil galaxy. To remove uncertainties around the characteristics of KiDS J0842+0059, particularly its size and structure, this team set about using the adaptive optics system of the LBT to get sharper images of this relic galaxy. This resulted in images with ten times the detail of the KiDS provided images. "Data from the LBT have allowed us to confirm that KiDS J0842+0059 is indeed compact and therefore a true galaxy relic with a shape similar to NGC 1277 and the compact galaxies we observe in the early stages of the universe," team member Chiara Spiniello, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said. "This is the first time that we have been able to do this with such high-resolution data for a galaxy relic so far away." NGC 1277 is another example of a rare stunted galactic fossil, which is located in the Perseus Cluster around 240 million light-years away, meaning it is much closer to home than KiDS J0842+0059. The fact that there are galaxies like NGC 1277 and KiDS J0842+0059 out there indicates some galaxies can form rapidly, stay compact and remain dormant for billions of years by dodging collisions with other galaxies. Related Stories: — How dark energy could relieve 'Hubble tension' and galaxy headaches — Astronomers see the 1st stars dispel darkness 13 billion years ago at 'Cosmic Dawn' — 'Our understanding of the universe may be incomplete': James Webb Space Telescope data suggests we need a 'new cosmic feature' to explain it all "Studying these cosmic fossils helps us reconstruct the formation history of the nuclei of today's massive galaxies, which — unlike relic galaxies — have undergone fusion processes, accreting matter right around those first compact galaxies from which they originated," Tortora said. "With cutting-edge technologies such as adaptive optics and the support of telescopes such as the LBT, we can improve our understanding of this type of galaxy. "In the near future, we will take a step forward, aiming to search for, confirm, and study new relic galaxies through the unique quality and high-resolution data of the Euclid space telescope." The team's research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Time of India
01-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Dinosaur in the universe: Astronomers discover ancient galaxy untouched for 7 billion years
Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of a rare, ancient galaxy that has remained virtually unchanged for over 7 billion years, offering a rare glimpse into the early universe . The galaxy, known as KiDS J0842+0059, is being hailed as a 'cosmic fossil' due to its pristine and undisturbed state. Researchers say it has experienced little to no interaction with other galaxies since its formation, allowing it to retain its original structure. Cosmic fossil by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 税金滞納による差し押さえ車両 沖縄 高級外車 価格一覧 中古車 | 検索広告 Undo A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has managed to remain unchanged by collisions and interactions with other galaxies. That means they can act as pristine time capsules to help astronomers study earlier galaxies. 'We have discovered a galaxy that has been 'perfectly preserved' for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day,' said Crescenzo Tortora, co-leader of the research team from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). Live Events The findings were made using observations from several leading instruments, including the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which allowed astronomers to confirm the galaxy's compact size and stellar mass, approximately 100 billion times that of the Sun. KiDS J0842+0059 was first identified in 2018 during the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). More recent high-resolution imaging from LBT provided a clearer picture of the galaxy's structure, ruling out prior uncertainties. 'This is the first time that we have been able to do this with such high-resolution data for a galaxy relic so far away,' said Chiara Spiniello, a researcher at the University of Oxford and a member of the research team. The galaxy, located 3 billion light-years from Earth, has shown almost no signs of star formation over billions of years, which is unusual for galaxies of its size. Most galaxies continue to evolve through collisions and mergers, which trigger bursts of new star formation. In contrast, KiDS J0842+0059 appears to have remained dormant and isolated. 'Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe,' Tortora said. 'Studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved.' The team compared KiDS J0842+0059 to NGC 1277, another well-known relic galaxy located much closer to Earth in the Perseus Cluster. Both share compact structures and similar characteristics, but KiDS J0842+0059 is far more distant, making it a rare observational target. The researchers hope that future observations, particularly with the upcoming Euclid space telescope, will help identify more fossil galaxies and further refine models of galaxy formation and cosmic evolution.
