Telescopes

The image showing the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 in the version published in 2019 and in the one reprocessed with the PRIMO system

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of using a machine learning system to obtain a sharper and more detailed version of the image showing the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. Lia Medeiros (Institute for Advanced Study), Dimitrios Psaltis (Georgia Tech), Tod Lauer (NOIRLab), and Feryal Özel (Georgia Tech), all members of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration that obtained the image that has become famous, developed the PRIMO system to reprocess the data collected during the original observation campaign in 2017. Their aim is to obtain the maximum possible resolution with all the details present in the data collected by the various radio telescopes participating in the EHT Collaboration. The image, to which the four researchers hold the rights, shows the comparison between the famous result published in 2019 and that of the first test with PRIMO.

The galaxy Arp 220 as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope

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An image (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)) captured by the James Webb Space Telescope portrays Arp 220, a galaxy that is the result, still not fully completed, of a galaxy merger. Intense processes are ongoing within this new galaxy as a consequence, starting with a remarkable star formation activity. X-ray emissions detected by other instruments suggest the presence of an active galactic nucleus. These are activities connected to its nature as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) whose emissions allowed Webb to capture many new details.

The map of dark matter based on observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope

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During the Future Science with CMB x LSS conference underway at Kyoto University, Japan, the results of a detailed mapping of dark matter in a part of the universe were presented. Three articles available in preview and submitted to “The Astrophysical Journal” illustrate these results, obtained using observations conducted at the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, which operated between 2007 and 2022. This map (Image courtesy ACT Collaboration) was obtained by analyzing the cosmic microwave background radiation and its deviations caused to the gravity of massive structures such as concentrations of dark matter.

The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope

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An image of the supernova remnant cataloged as Cassiopeia A (NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (UGent), J. DePasquale (STScI)), or simply Cas A, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows never-before-seen details of the structures present within the materials surrounding what remains of the progenitor star. These are useful details for astronomers to reconstruct the processes that take place in the last stages of the life of a massive star and the consequences of a supernova. Elements generated by the star are scattered into space, including cosmic dust in quantities that could explain the abundance discovered in early galaxies.

The two quasars of SDSS J0749+2255 as seen by Hubble (Image NASA, ESA, Yu-Ching Chen (UIUC), Hsiang-Chih Hwang (IAS), Nadia Zakamska (JHU), Yue Shen (UIUC))

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the discovery of a pair of merging galaxies cataloged as SDSS J0749+2255 which has the peculiarity of hosting a double quasar. A team of researchers led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used various ground-based and space telescopes to study SDSS J0749+2255 to obtain observations detailed enough to resolve the two quasars, both of which are extremely bright. The difficulty in these observations is also given by the fact that this pair is very distant and we see it as it was when the universe was about three billion years old and the distance between the two supermassive black holes that power their respective quasars is only about ten thousand light-years.