Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Deep Secrets Of The Universe

1)

Brightest object in the universe


 Astromers have discovered ULAS J1120+0641,A quasar that existed when the universe was only 770 million years old,It has been titled as the brightest object ever found in the universe -because it took nearly 13 billion years for its light to reach the Earth.It is about 60 trillion times more brighter then our sun. (A trillion is 1 million millions.) ULAS J1120+0641 took the brightest object title from another quasar that wasn't formed until about 100 million years later, when the universe was 870 million years old.
"Since quasars are so luminous, they guide astronomers studying the conditions of the cosmos following the Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

2)
Most massive black hole in the universe.


The black hole at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87 in cluster Virgo fifty million light-years away is the most massive black hole known so far -6.6 billion solar masses. Orbiting the galaxy is an abnormally large population of about 12,000 globular clusters, compared to 150-200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way.

It is vastly larger than the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, which is about 4 million solar masses. The black hole’s event horizon, 20 billion km across and could swallow our solar system whole.

In order to calculate the black hole’s mass, the astronomers measured how fast surrounding stars orbit the black hole. They found that, on average, the stars orbit at speeds of nearly 500 km/s (for comparison, the sun orbits the black hole at the center of the Milky Way at about 220 km/s). From these observations, the astronomers could come up with what they say is the most accurate estimate for the mass of a supermassive black hole.The team theorizes that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes. M87 is the largest, most massive galaxy in the nearby universe, and is thought to have been formed by the merging of 100 or so smaller galaxies. The M87 black hole’s large size and relative proximity, the astronomers think that it could be the first black hole that they could actually “see.”

Future calculations may attempt to calculate the size of another black hole with a roughly estimated mass of 18 billion solar masses, which is located in a galaxy about 3.5 billion light-years away.

3)

Sunrise and sunset on mars


4)


This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.

The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic butterflies were named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.

Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun.
When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colors. Our own sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.

In Spitzer's infrared view of the Helix nebula, the eye looks more like that of a green monster's. Infrared light from the outer gaseous layers is represented in blues and greens. The white dwarf is visible as a tiny white dot in the center of the picture. The red color in the middle of the eye denotes the final layers of gas blown out when the star died.

The brighter red circle in the very center is the glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust, discovered by Spitzer's infrared heat-seeking vision, was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star. Before the star died, its comets and possibly planets would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. But when the star blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, resulting in an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.

The Helix nebula is one of only a few dead-star systems in which evidence for comet survivors has been found.

5)



 Hubble's deepest view-Everything you see in the above picture is a galaxy,it is the most detailed and deepest picture of the universe provided to mankind by hubble telescope.


Hubble captured several thousand never-before-seen galaxies, which were formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxies are about 13 billion light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.
The image was taken in a region of space that Hubble scanned in 2004. Since the new camera has a near-infared channel, it allows the orbiting telescope to peer deeper into the universe and spot distant galaxies.
The camera was installed in May by NASA spacewalking astronauts as part of a mission to upgrade and repair the aging telescope.
Hubble is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency.

6)



Looking beyond the dust in the Milk Way, scientists have discovered 96 new star clusters. Using the world's largest survey telescope, scientists were able to snap infrared images of the clusters. Thirty of the new clusters are shown in this mosaic.

7)


The Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8, or M8) is a stellar nursery in the Milky Way that looks totally psychedelic. This striking image was captured using the Gemini South telescope in Chile and it reveals the chaotic environment in which new stars are born.

The nebula is sometimes called the 'Southern Cliff' because a sharp drop-off point is visible. Looking beyond the 'cliff,' you can see a formation of young stars shining in the upper left corner of the image.

8)

Baby pictures are usually adorable, but this one's out of this world - literally.

Astronomers have captured an image of what they believe to be a newly formed black hole, which resulted from a star that went supernova in 1979. Black holes are warped regions in space where it is so dense that nothing, not even light itself, can escape.

'If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed,' said Daniel Patnaude, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the study.

9)




Solar Flares

10)
Beautiful nebula


11)



Is that a smashed comet or an X-Wing fighter?
Scientists are offering up their own theories as to what created the striking star-inspired image, which was captured by NASA's Hubble telescope.
"Two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles.
The object - dubbed “P/2010 A2” after it was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program sky survey - has traits similar to a comet, but the x-shape appears disconnected from the tail.
"The filamentary appearance of P/2010 A2 is different from anything seen in Hubble images of normal comets," Jewitt said.
Sci-fi lovers may instead go for a more fantastical theory, believing it to be the "Last Starfighter" or, perhaps, a Kilrathi dreadnought from the Wing Commander video game

12)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars.

13)

Rosette Nebula
14)

Bubble nebula(NGC 7635)

15)

Horsehead Nebula
16)

Ant Nebula(Menzel 3)
17)

Sombrero galaxy
18)
War of the galaxies

The collision between the two galaxies, which lie about 62 million light-years from Earth, started more than 100 million years ago and is still taking place.
19)
A beautiful composite image of the Milky Way centre using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory

20)

Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old Cloud harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.
The cloud of water vapor surrounds a supermassive black hole called a quasar located 12 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery shows that water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence, researchers said.
"Because the light we are seeing left this quasar more than 12 billion years ago, we are seeing water that was present only some 1.6 billion years after the beginning of the universe," said study co-author Alberto Bolatto, of the University of Maryland, in a statement. "This discovery pushes the detection of water one billion years closer to the Big Bang than any previous find."

21)

 Interesting...rite?

22)

Snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope, these images of Arp 273 are truly spectacular. Two galaxies are coming close to colliding because of powerful gravitational tides.

23)

Expansion of universe after big bang



24)

Biggest known star to mankind -vy canis majoris


Vy canis majoris is the largest star known to mankind.It is 2,100 times the size of the sun.Placed in our Solar System, its surface would extend out past the orbit of Saturn. Some astronomers disagree, and think that VY Canis Majoris might be smaller; merely 600 times the size of the Sun, extending past the orbit of Mars.That’s the biggest star that we know of, but the Milky way probably has dozens of stars that are even larger, obscured by gas and dust so we can’t see them.



25)


The Sloan Great Wall is a giant wall of galaxies (a galactic filament) and to the present day is the largest known structure in the universe. Its discovery was announced on October 20, 2003 by J. Richard Gott III of Princeton University and Mario Jurić and their colleagues, based on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The wall measures 1.37 billion light years (1.30×1025 m) in length, which is approximately 1/60 of the diameter of the observable universe, and is located approximately one billion light-years from Earth.



 

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