| Cosmic Webs and Young Supernova |
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| Written by Nathaniel Whitehead | |
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Once again we have some incredible news to bring to you from the plurality of sources streaming on the online superhighway. The Hubble Space Telescope has found yet more of the missing baryonic matter and is investigating the “cosmic web”, astronomers have used carbon monoxide in a distant galaxy to probe the residual heat from the big bang in the early universe, astronomers using Chandra have discovered the remnant of the youngest supernova in our galaxy, Mars is much colder below ground than once previous thought, and we have a very exciting talk to tell you about taking place at the North Houston Astronomy Club. So let’s jump into it… Exploring the Cosmic Web with Hubble In the last newsletter we talked about astronomers that had located some of the missing matter in the universe using the XMM-Newton spacecraft to probe the darkness, now astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have been able to not only probe the missing matter but investigate the cosmic web that it is bound to. The cosmic web is a structure that is observed over the largest scales of the universe, consisting of mostly dark matter that attracts the normal matter through its gravitational influence, the web stretches across the entire universe in large filaments and massive voids.
Using quasars, very bright objects in the early universe, the astronomers were able to probe the missing matter found in the intergalactic medium, which is the vast spaces between the galaxies, and look at the spectral signature of light passing through the matter. They found hundreds of filaments of hydrogen and many filaments of highly ionized oxygen by looking at the spectral signature of the light that was passing though.
The team’s observations give us the most accurate map to date of how the interstellar medium looks within four billion light years of the Earth, which is a massive amount of space. These observations can give us more insight into not only the largest structures of the universe, but the matter that makes up the bulk of the cosmos and the processes that lead to the formation of galaxies like our own. To read more about this story visit the Hubble news release and our original source; http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/20/ Universal Thermometer: Indian astronomer Raghunathan Srianand along with European astronomers have discovered carbon monoxide in a galaxy over 11 billion light years away from Earth and are using it to probe the temperature of the early universe. Using the light of a distant quasar to probe the chemicals in this far off galaxy they were able to obtain the most sensitive temperature reading of the heat from the big bang (which most modern scientific theories hold to have been the event to begin the universe) in the cosmos when it was only 3 billion years old. The heat left over from the bang is called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) and is measured to be about 2.7 degrees Kelvin in our epoch of the universe and by using the light that passed through the carbon monoxide these astronomers were able to read the temperature of the CMB at that epoch was 9.15K, and theory had predicted about 9.3K, so it is extremely close and offers some verification to modern cosmological theories. For more information on this story visit the following link and our original source; http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080519/jsp/nation/story_9289941.jsp Youngest Super Nova in Our Galaxy Has Been Found: Using the Chandra X-ray observatory and observations from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array astronomers have located what they believe to be the most recent supernova in our galaxy.
Based on calculations of supernovae from other galaxies astronomers estimate that there should be about three a century in our own, but until now have hard time finding very recent ones. The problem being that many are obscured in our home galaxy by the tons of dust and other matter that blinds us from many a view of the other parts of the Milky Way. The team estimates that this recent remnant is from an event that occurred about 140 years ago. To read more on this and other interesting stories visit the following link and our original source; http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/08_releases/press_051408.html Mars is colder than Once Thought: Using observations and data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter researchers have found out that the upper part of the Martian crust and mantle of Mars must be colder and more rigid that previously thought. The conclusion comes from several observations of the lithosphere of Mars and the way it reacts to the massive weight of the red planet’s polar cap. On a planet like the Earth the mass of the polar ice bends the underlying crust and mantle because of the weight and this is because on Earth it is flexible enough to give way, but what has been found on Mars is that its lithosphere doesn’t bend under the weight of the mass of ice, and this means that the underlying material is much colder and stiffer than we thought. This also means that any liquid water and life that might be on Mars may have to be deeper than we believed and so affects the method of searching for such things on our little neighbor. The radar and instrumentation that lead to these observations are exciting in their ability to give us new abilities to look at Mars and other planets and moons for deeper and clearer understanding of the geology that is involved. To read more on this and other stories from the MRO visit the following link and our original source; http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/newsroom/pressreleases/20080515a.html Larry Pinsky to talk at Houston Astronomical Society: Dr. Larry Pinsky, a renowned and respected physics professor from the University of Houston will be giving a talk to the North Houston Astronomy Club entitled: "The Opposite Ends of the Universe... “An introduction to the Standard Model of Matter and its impact on the largest scale structure of the Universe. It is at Kingwood College Friday May 23, 7:30 pm. To get there follow US 59 North to Kingwood Drive 9about 20-30 min from downtown Houston) and turn left under the highway. Follow Kingwood drive west up to a T. http://kingwood.lonestar.edu/27070/. The college will on your right and the building is CLA. The first one on your right. http://kingwood.lonestar.edu/27071/. The auditorium is the Teaching Theater which will be found at your left after you cross the glass doors of the main entrance of CLA. The meeting starts at 7 :30 pm. For more information on the North Houston Astronomy Club visit their website at the following link; http://www.astronomyclub.org/ Meetings of the North Houston Astronomy Club Meetings are held on the 4th Friday of every month. They are held in the Teaching Theatre located in the CLA building of Kingwood College @ 7:30 p.m. (Novice session @ 6:30-7:15 pm) Meetings of the Houston Astronomical Society Meetings are held on the 1st Friday of every month. They are held in room #117 of the Science and Research Building I of the University of Houston, central campus @ 8:00 p.m. (Novice sessions across the hall @ 7:00 p.m.) Meetings of the Fort Bend Astronomy Club: The Fort Bend Astronomy Club meetings are held at the HCC southwest campus in Stafford, TX. Meetings begin at 7:00 p.m. in the #7 lecture hall and in rooms 102/104 and usually feature both novice and advanced programs Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society: JSCAS meets on the second Friday of every month at 7:30 PM. the meetings are held in the auditorium at the Center for Advanced Space Studies (formerly LPI) located at 3600 Bay Area Blvd. (at Middlebrook Drive). |
