39 ancestors of massive elliptical galaxies discovered in the early universe

0

An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the discovery of 39 galaxies in the early universe. A team of researchers combined data from different telescopes to identify a group of galaxies dating back to the first two billion years after the Big Bang that were invisible to previous observations in their areas conducted at optical frequencies. Their study could offer new information on the evolution of galaxies, on the supermassive black holes at their center and also on the distribution of dark matter.

A heavily obscured primordial supermassive black hole discovered

0

An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the discovery of a supermassive black hole in an initial phase of growth in which it’s heavily obscured and that dates back to around 850 million after the Big Bang, the oldest of that type discovered so far. A team of researchers used data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to carry out this study but even putting together other data collected with the ALMA radio telescope it’s not certain whether that black hole matches the quasar cataloged as PSO167-13 or a nearby galaxy.

The galaxy Holmberg 15A (Image courtesy Juan P. Madrid & Carlos J. Donzelli)

0

An article submitted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of an ultramassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Holmberg 15A, a supergiant elliptical galaxy that is the dominant central member of the Abell 85 galaxy cluster. A team of astronomers led by Kianusch Mehrgan of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching bei München, Germany, used the MUSE instrument mounted on ESO’s VLT in Chile to study that galaxy estimating that the mass of that black hole is about 40 billion times the Sun’s.

In ancient times there was a dynamic environment in Gale Crater on Mars

1

NASA has provided an update of its Mars Rover Curiosity’s activities in what was called a clay-bearing unit of ​​Mount Sharp on Mars. Clay is associated with water, so the goal of current research is to offer new information to reconstruct the history of Mars, in this case of Gale Crater, where in ancient times there was a lake and now there’s Mount Sharp. Lately, Curiosity has been working near an outcrop that was named “Teal Ridge” and near a rock that was named “Strathdon”, formed by dozens of sedimentary layers that suggest a more dynamic environment than other typical lake sediments.

Representation of the jet of a gamma-ray burst such as GRB 190114C (Image courtesy Kitty Yeung)

0

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports a study on a gamma-ray burst cataloged as GRB 190114C and detected by NASA’s Swift satellite and the MAGIC telescopes at the Canaries. Professor Evgeny Derishev and Professor Tsvi Piran put together the data from these detecions, which are about photons at very different energies, concluding that the radiations detected must have originated in a jet that moved at a speed of about 99.99% of the speed of light. These are so-called ultra-high energy emissions in the Teraelettronvolt (TeV) range and they think that the mechanism of origin is the inverse Compton scattering while emissions of less energetic photons originate from synchrotron radiation.