Tag Archive for 'SDSS'

Pfeifle et al provide the strongest evidence yet for a system of three supermassive black holes. Image credit: NASA / CXC / George Mason University / R. Pfeifle et al / SDSS / NASA / STScI.

Astronomers Find Triple Supermassive Black Hole

Sep 29, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from several space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a system of three supermassive black holes within SDSS J084905.51+111447.2,...

This artist’s impression shows Ross 128b, with the red dwarf star Ross 128 in the background. This system is located in the constellation of Virgo, about 11 light-years away. Ross 128b is 20 times closer to the star than the Earth is to the Sun, and takes just 9.9 days to circle it. The planet’s equilibrium temperature is estimated to be 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Exoplanet Ross 128b Likely Has Temperate Climate: Study

Jul 11, 2018 by News Staff

Understanding which chemical elements are present in a star in what abundances can help astronomers estimate the makeup of planets that orbit them, which...

In the upper part of this Hubble image, the light from distant galaxies has been smeared and twisted into odd shapes, arcs, and streaks. This phenomenon indicates the presence of a massive galaxy cluster, SDSS J0150+2725, which is bending the light coming from the galaxies behind it with its monstrous gravitational influence. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Sees Giant Galaxy Cluster

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a fantastic photo of a massive galaxy cluster named SDSS J0150+2725. In the upper part of this Hubble...

An artistic illustration of a binary black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Discover Five New Double Supermassive Black Holes

Oct 4, 2017 by News Staff

Five new pairs of merging supermassive black holes have been discovered by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-Field Infrared...

The star-forming dwarf galaxy J0811+4730 is a proxy for primordial galaxies. Image credit: University of Virginia.

Astronomers Find Record-Breaking Oxygen-Deficient Galaxy

Sep 26, 2017 by News Staff

The oxygen level in J0811+4730, a star-forming dwarf galaxy in the constellation Lynx, some 630 million light-years away, is the lowest yet discovered...

Slice through the celestial equator showing the radial component of the velocity field (in km per second). Blue regions are falling towards us and red regions are flying away from us. Galaxies of the SDSS main galaxy sample are overplotted. In the center of the slice, the infalling dynamics of the Sloan Great Wall, one of the largest structure of the known Universe, can be observed. Image credit: Leclercq et al.

Researchers Release New Maps of Dark Matter Dynamics

Jul 26, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has unveiled detailed maps of dark matter dynamics in the nearby Universe. The research is published in the Journal...

The elliptical galaxy 3C186, located about 8 billion years from Earth, is most likely the result of a merger of two galaxies. This is supported by arc-shaped tidal tails, usually produced by a gravitational tug between two colliding galaxies, identified by M. Chiaberge et al. The merger of the galaxies also led to a merger of the two supermassive black holes in their centers, and the resultant black hole was then kicked out of its parent galaxy by the gravitational waves created by the merger. The bright, star-like looking quasar can be seen in the center of the image. Its former host galaxy is the faint, extended object behind it. Image credit: NASA / ESA / M. Chiaberge, STScI.

Supermassive Black Hole Found 35,000 Light-Years from Home

Mar 24, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have uncovered a monster black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy, called 3C 186, by what could be the power...

This SDSS image shows a group of dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound together. The detection of seven such groups lends support to the idea that large galaxies formed by the collision and merger of smaller galaxies in the early Universe. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Researchers Find Seven Isolated Clusters of Dwarf Galaxies

Jan 26, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by National Radio Astronomy Observatory and University of Virginia astrophysicist Sabrina Stierwalt has spotted...

The six most common elements of life on Earth (including more than 97% of the mass of a human body) are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus. The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star. The human body on the left uses the same color coding to evoke the important role these elements play in different parts of our bodies, from oxygen in our lungs to phosphorous in our bones (although in reality all elements are found all across the body). In the background is an artist’s impression of the Galaxy, with cyan dots to show the APOGEE measurements of the oxygen abundance in different stars; brighter dots indicate higher oxygen abundance. Image credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital Inc / SDSS.

Astronomers Map ‘Elements of Life’ in Milky Way Galaxy

Jan 14, 2017 by News Staff

At the 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 5, 2017, astronomers from the SDSS/APOGEE (Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Apache Point Observatory...

An artist’s rendition of interior compositions of planets around Kepler-102 and Kepler-407. The picture shows what minerals are likely to occur several different depths. An exoplanet in orbit around Kepler-102 is Earth-like, dominated by olivine minerals, whereas a planet around Kepler-407 is dominated by garnet, so less likely to have plate tectonics. Image credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Institution.

Garnet Exoplanets Exist, But Can They Be Habitable?

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers and geoscientists from the United States and Brazil have joined forces to study the mix of major rock-building elements in exoplanet-hosting...

Astrophysicists Create Largest Ever Map of Cosmic Superstructures

Oct 13, 2016 by News Staff

Astrophysicists from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, UK, have produced the largest ever map of cosmic superstructures...

$This is one slice through the map of the large-scale structure of the Universe from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Each dot in this picture indicates the position of a galaxy 6 billion years into the past. The image covers about 1/20th of the sky, a slice of the Universe 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high, and 500 million light-years thick. Color indicates distance from Earth, ranging from yellow on the near side of the slice to purple on the far side. Galaxies are highly clustered, revealing superclusters and voids whose presence is seeded in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This image contains 48,741 galaxies, about 3% of the full survey dataset. Grey patches are small regions without survey data. Image credit: Daniel Eisenstein / SDSS-III Collaboration.$