Telescopes

The galaxy MCG+01-02-015, also known as LEDA 1852 (Photo ESA/Hubble & NASA and N. Grogin (STScI), Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt)

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The galaxy MCG+01-02-015, also known as LEDA 1852, got photographed using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument. The special characteristic of this galaxy is that it’s extremely isolated. Generally, galaxies are part of clusters which are in turn part of larger formations, bonded together in structures called galactic filaments, formations at a really huge scale. Among these filaments, however, there are cosmic voids in which sometimes there may be a lonely galaxy.

The Tarantula Nebula with the PSR J0540-6919 and PSR J0537-6910 pulsars circled (Image NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; background: ESO/R. Fosbury (ST-ECF))

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An article published in the journal “Science” describes the study of the first gamma-ray emitting pulsar discovered outside the Milky Way. Cataloged as PSR J0540-6919, it’s part of an area full of stars known as the Tarantula Nebula or 30 Doradus within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The gamma rays emission from this pulsar was identified by the LAT (Large Area Telescope), one of the instruments of the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope.

V774104 (Foto cortesia Subaru Telescope by Scott Sheppard, Chad Trujillo, and David Tholen. Tutti i diritti riservati)

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At the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in National Harbor, Maryland, the discovery of a celestial body called for now only V774104 was announced. Using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, a team led by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii discovered what seems the most distant object yet detected in the solar system being about 15.5 billion kilometers (about 9.5 billion miles) from the Sun, about three times Pluto and about 103 times that of Earth.

Diagram of coronal eruption. At the left the corona (feature in purplish colors) gathers inward, becoming brighter, before shooting away from the black hole (middle and right) (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes the detailed observation of a huge X-ray eruption by a supermassive black hole known as Markarian 335 or Mrk 335. The Swift and NuSTAR space telescopes were used to examine this phenomenon of gigantic proportions concluding that it originated from a coronal ejection.

Artistic representation of a red giant with its powerful internal magnetic field (Image courtesy Rafael A. García (SAp CEA), Kyle Augustson (HAO), Jim Fuller (Caltech) & Gabriel Pérez (SMM, IAC), Photograph from AIA/SDO)

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An article published in recent days in the journal “Science” describes research that has used the technique of asteroseismology to estimate the intensity of the magnetic fields in the vicinity of the cores of some red giants. This allowed to establish that their intensity can also be 10 million times greater than the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s the first time that scientists have been able to investigate within this type of star.