Seeds of Massive Black Holes Found at the Center of the Milky Way

A research team at Keio University, led by Associate Professor Tomoharu Oka, has discovered intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) candidates at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

It is about 30,000 light-years from the solar system in the direction of Sagittarius.

IMBH candidates are considered to be the "seeds" that form and grow massive black holes.

Using radio telescopes, the research team led by Associate Professor Oka has found four "warm, dense (more than 50 degrees Kelvin, more than 10,000 hydrogen molecules per cubic centimeter)" masses of molecular gas at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Three of those masses of molecular gas have been expanding.

This research suggests that supernova explosions caused the expansion. It is estimated that the largest explosion that occurred in the masses of molecular gas is equivalent to 200 supernova explosions.

On the other hand, the age of the gas masses is approximately 60,000 years old. Therefore, it can be inferred that a huge star cluster is buried in one of the gas masses.

The mass of the cluster (more than 100,000 times the mass of the sun) is comparable to the largest star cluster found in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is thought that IMBHs are formed within such huge star clusters.

Eventually, IMBHs born near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy form/expand into a supermassive black hole at the nucleus of the galaxy.

Details Many galaxies contain enormous amounts of molecular gas in small areas near their nuclei. Highly condensed molecular gas is a birthplace of lots of stars. Moreover, it is considered to closely relate to activities of galactic nuclei.

Therefore, it is important to investigate the physical state and chemical properties of molecular gas at galaxy centers through observation.

US National Radio Astronomy undergoes Budget Cuts

The US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday announced layoffs and travel restrictions.

Director Anthony Beasley, who was appointed in February, had to find $3 million in 2013 budget cuts — about 6% of the organization’s budget, excluding its commitments to the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array in Chile.

The cuts include layoffs of 26 staff members.

According to Beasley, it will mean that there will be less support for users of facilities such as the Very Long Baseline Array and Green Bank Telescope (pictured). “Morale is obviously being impacted by this,” he says.

Beasley says the cuts reflect the overall efforts of the National Science Foundation to trim budgets in order to make way for new projects, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

NRAO is not the only astronomy community forced to tighten its belt. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, announced in April that it was laying off 35 scientists and support workers.

ESA SRON JAXA Astro-H: A New space telescope to explore the violent Universe

European astronomers will be able to explore the universe with a powerful new Japanese space telescope thanks to an agreement recently signed.

Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will cooperate in building and operating a satellite called Astro-H.

The orbiting observatory will watch the heavens with X-ray eyes, the latest in a number of space telescopes that can view this part of the spectrum beyond that of visible light. X-rays are emitted by extremely hot events at temperatures ranging from several million to several hundred million degrees Celsius.

Watching them will allow space scientists to observe some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe including supernova explosions, neutron stars, black holes and the centres of active galaxies.

It will also help them to probe the large-scale structure of the Universe, including clusters of galaxies, and discover how it has evolved over billions of years. It will also help show how matter behaves in extreme gravitational fields.

JAXA’s Dr Tadayuki Takahashi, who invented the technology behind the camera, said: "We are aiming to quickly turn this technology to practical use."

The deal to work together on this exciting mission was signed last month by Professor Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, and Dr Junjiro Onoda, Director General of the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).

ESA will provide JAXA with hardware components and support for operations and users. In return, astronomers at institutions in ESA countries will be granted observing time on the Astro-H mission.

NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center is also contributing instrumentation to Astro-H, formerly known as NeXT, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin.

The telescope is due to be launched in 2014 from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Southern Japan and will be placed in low-Eath orbit, which is high enough to be clear of the atmosphere which absorbs X-rays and makes them unobservable on the ground.

Astro-H will carry an array of spectrometers and imagers. But it also offers a prime example of how space science can have direct benefits to life back on Earth.

The spacecraft is being equipped with a gamma-ray detector that will observe the dying gasps of stars that go supernova.

The precision that this instrument is capable of will also be used on the ground to help Japan clean up contamination left by the Fukushima disaster after the massive earthquake in 2011.

Global observatory sees first light

At 1-metre across, the telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory in Goleta, California, will be small fry but they will soon be stitched into a global network that will provide researchers with around-the-clock coverage of quickly changing objects such as extrasolar planets, asteroids and supernovae.

On 31 March, the first telescope in the network saw first light, at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, just 60 hours after it was unloaded from the truck.

Eventually, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) network will deploy two or three identical 1-metre telescopes, each costing about US$1 million, at observatories in Hawaii, Chile, South Africa, Australia and the Canary Islands. LCOGT also has two 2-metre robotic Faulkes telescopes in Australia and Hawaii.

The philosophy behind the telescopes' design is “don’t be cute, don’t be fancy", says LCOGT scientific director Tim Brown. "Make something you know will work and make a lot of them. Put them out in the field and let them do their thing.”

LCOGT was founded by the computing pioneer Wayne Rosing, a veteran of companies including Apple and Google.

Rosing was also an amateur astronomer, and would help other amateurs to customize their hardware and software. Eventually, he decided he wanted to make a more serious contribution to astronomy.

Rosing cashed in his stake in Google, and gave tens of millions of dollars to the LCOGT project. “I was employee number 6, back in 2006,” says Brown. “We’ve expanded to 60 these days.”

Remote control
The LCOGT team wanted to design a telescope that astronomers would never have to visit. The telescope mount is compact, making it easier to drive with robust mechanical systems.

Every telescope is made from the same components and none of them need to be cooled with liquid nitrogen, which would have required occasional replenishing.

Brown hopes that astronomers will be able to control the network remotely, with one telescope handing over to the next so that the object under study is always in view.

Even though it uses small telescopes, this sort of work can have a big pay-offs. Astronomy has shifted towards broad, shallow surveys of the sky that are aimed at detecting unusual events.

After it is completed early next decade, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), for example, will take a snapshot of the entire southern sky every three days.

The LCOGT network is being designed to provide continuous coverage of some of the objects that the LSST reveals.

Brown says that the LCOGT has three priorities: tracking the motion of candidate exoplanets found by NASA's Kepler space telescope; measuring the decay of light from supernovae to help reduce uncertainties in the estimates of dark energy; and pinpointing the trajectories of near-Earth asteroids.

Mike Montgomery, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin and the scientific director for the Whole Earth Telescope (WET), welcomes the LCOGT.

The WET, an ad hoc global network of about 25 telescopes, has since 1986 been pursuing one or two annual campaigns involving several weeks of observations.

He says that every year he has to come up with a science proposal so that collaborators can apply for time on the small telescopes in the WET network.

Sometimes, there are gaps in coverage. “It’s a headache,” says Montgomery. “Every telescope in the world has a different deadline and a different proposal format.”

Montgomery says that, as a one-stop shop for global observations, the LCOGT will be less bureaucratic.

Because they own the telescopes outright, LCOGT will be able to pursue year-round campaigns on many more objects. “It’s the difference between renting and owning,” Montgomery says.

Square Kilometre Array (SKA): South Africa wins science panel's backing

A scientific panel has narrowly recommended South Africa over Australia as the best site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an enormous radio telescope.

But the project's member states have yet to make a final decision on where the telescope will go.

A source familiar with the site selection process confirmed that the panel had indeed made a decision, but added that it was a close call. "This is not an enormous preference for one over the other," he says.

The US$2.1 billion SKA radio telescope will be made up of some 3,000 dishes, each 15 metres in diameter.

It will try to answer big questions about the early universe: how the first elements heavier than helium formed, for example, and how the first galaxies coalesced.

The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds, something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Background
Since 2006, South Africa has competed against a joint bid from Australia and New Zealand to host the project.

The South African site has some compelling advantages: construction costs are lower, and it sits at higher altitude. But the Australian site would be cheaper to insure, and is less likely to be encroached on by future development. The margin in favour of the winner was extremely narrow, the source says.

Final Bid process
Members of SKA's board will meet on 19 March in Manchester, UK, to discuss the scientific panel's recommendations.

The closed meeting will also provide the two bidders with the opportunity to contest any of the panel's recommendations. After the meeting, SKA's board write a commentary to accompany the recommendation, which will inform the final decision.

According to the source, because the two sites are so close in merit, both are still in contention. China, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the SKA's voting board members, could yet decide either way.

It is even possible that the array could be shared between both nations, though this would likely increase the construction costs.

A final site decision could come as soon as 4 April, when a meeting of the board is tentatively scheduled in Amsterdam.

Nature ref: doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10205

Fermi telescope: Gamma-ray bursts' highest power side unveiled

Detectable for only a few seconds but possessing enormous energy, gamma-ray bursts are difficult to capture because their energy does not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, thanks to an orbiting telescope, astrophysicists are filling in the unknowns surrounding these bursts and uncovering new questions.

The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, formerly called the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, launched on June 11, 2008. As part of its mission, the telescope records any gamma-ray bursts within its viewing area.

"Fermi is lucky to measure the highest energy portion of the gamma-ray burst emission, which last for hundreds to thousands of seconds -- maybe 20 minutes," said Péter Mészáros, Eberly Chair Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics, Penn State.

Most gamma-ray bursts occur when stars that are more than 25 times larger than our sun come to the end of their lives. When the internal nuclear reaction in these stars ends, the star collapses in on itself and forms a black hole. The outer envelope of the star is ejected forming a supernova.

"The black hole is rotating rapidly and as it is swallowing the matter from the star, the rotation ejects a jet of material through the supernova envelope," said Mészáros.

This jet causes the gamma-ray burst, which briefly becomes the brightest thing in the sky. However, unlike supernovas that radiate in all directions, gamma-ray bursts radiate in a very narrow area, and Fermi sees only jets ejecting in its direction.

This, however, is the direction in which they send their highest energy photons. Any gamma-ray bursts on the other side of the black hole or even off at an angle are invisible to the telescope.

"We actually miss about 500 gamma-ray bursts for every one we detect," Mészáros told attendees today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The gamma-ray bursts that Fermi has seen have allowed astrophysicists to clarify previous theories about gamma-ray bursts.

"We have been able to rule out the simplest version of theories which combine quantum mechanics with gravity, although others remain to be tested," said Mészáros.

Mészáros notes that Fermi and other programs like the SWIFT telescope have shown that gamma-ray bursts last longer than we thought they did and that there are long and short gamma-ray bursts.

Read more about the SWIFT Telescope discovery here

NuStar: The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array

NuSTAR, The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, will image the sky for the first time in the high energy X-ray (6-79 keV) region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Our view of the universe in this spectral window has been limited previously. NuSTAR is scheduled to launch March 14, 2012, from an aircraft operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Here, NuSTAR is seen undergoing a solar array illumination test.

Credit: NASA

Chandra Image: Abell 3376

Two different teams have reported using Chandra observations of galaxy clusters to study the properties of gravity on cosmic scales and test Einstein's theory of General Relativity.

Such studies are crucial for understanding the evolution of the universe, both in the past and the future, and for probing the nature of dark energy, one of the biggest mysteries in science.

This composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3376 shows X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope in gold, an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey in red, green and blue, and a radio image from the VLA in blue.

The "bullet-like" appearance of the X-ray data is caused by a merger, as material flows into the galaxy cluster from the right side. The giant radio arcs on the left side of the image may be caused by shock waves generated by this merger.

The growth of galaxy clusters like Abell 3376 is influenced by the expansion rate of the universe - controlled by the competing effects of dark matter and dark energy - and by the properties of gravity over large scales.

By contrast, observations of supernovas or the large-scale distribution of galaxies, which measure cosmic distances, depend only on the expansion rate of the universe and are not sensitive to the properties of gravity.

In the first of the new studies of gravity, an alternative theory to General Relativity called "f(R) gravity" was tested.

In this theory, the acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not come from an exotic form of energy but from a modification of the gravitational force.

Mass estimates of galaxy clusters in the local universe were compared with model predictions for f(R) gravity.

Data from geometrical studies, such as supernova work, were also used. Using this comparison between theory and observation, no evidence was found that gravity is different from General Relativity on scales larger than 130 million light years.

This limit corresponds to a hundred-fold improvement on the bounds of the modified gravitational force's range that can be set without using the cluster data.

In the second study, a comparison was made between X-ray observations of how rapidly galaxy clusters have grown over cosmic time to the predictions of General Relativity.

Once again, data from geometrical studies such as distances to supernovas and galaxy clusters were incorporated.

Nearly complete agreement was seen between observation and theory, arguing against any alternative gravity models with a different rate of growth.

In particular "DGP gravity" (named after its inventors Gia Dvali, Gregory Gabadadze, and Massimo Porrati) predicts a slower rate of cluster growth than General Relativity, because gravity is weakened on large scales as it leaks into an extra dimension. Like f(R) gravity, the DGP model is designed to avoid the need for an exotic form of energy causing cosmic acceleration.

Chandra observations of galaxy clusters have previously been used to show that dark energy has stifled the growth of these massive structures over the last 5 billion years and to provide independent evidence for the existence of dark energy by offering a different way to measure cosmic distances.

NASA Kepler: Discovers tiniest Solar System

Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the tiniest solar system found so far. 

The system consists of a single red dwarf star, known as KOI-961 and three planets which are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. 

The planets are thought to be rocky - like Earth - but orbit much closer to their star making them too hot to be habitable.

Oxford University Astrophysics professor Steven Rawlings found dead

A man who was found dead in a bungalow was an Oxford University professor, police have revealed.

Steven Gregory Rawlings, 50, was found at the home in Oxfordshire on Wednesday night. He was Official Fellow and Tutor in Physics of St Peter's College.

A University of Oxford spokesman added: "He was one of the lead scientists in the international Square Kilometre Array project and also played a prominent role in the redevelopment of the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in Cornwall as a radio astronomy facility.

In a further statement, the university said: "He was a much liked and admired tutor and colleague within the college and will be greatly missed."

A 49-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Thames Valley Police said Prof Rawlings and the arrested man had known each other.

The emergency services were called to Laurel Drive, Southmoor, at 23:20 GMT on Wednesday by a member of the public reporting that a man had been injured at the address.
'Students devastated'

Det Supt Rob Mason, from the Thames Valley Police major crime unit, said: "On attendance at the address CPR was administered by a member of the public, police officers and paramedics, but unfortunately the man had passed away.

The crime scene on Laurel Drive, Southmoor Police said Prof Rawlings and the suspect appeared to have known each other

"The investigation is still in the early stages and we are endeavouring to establish what has happened in the house and we are keeping an open mind until all our inquires are concluded.

"It is apparent that he was well respected and liked within the college and colleagues and students have been devastated by the news."

Prof Rawlings was elected to his fellowship in 1994.

He was head of the sub-department of astrophysics at the university from 2006 to 2010.

"We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife Linda."

A post-mortem examination was due to take place on Thursday evening.

China and India Invest in World's Biggest Telescope

China and India have signed up to take part in the construction of the world’s largest telescope, which will be able to find objects up to 13 billion light years away.

The Thirty Metre Telescope, or TMT, will have a 30 metre-wide optical lens and is over nine times bigger than anything being used today.

It will be built on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its isolated position on top of a volcano makes it ideal for astronomical observations.

The two countries have agreed to pay a share of the $1 billion cost of the telescope, which is to be built at the summit of Mauna Kea volcano and is expected to be completed in 2018. Japan is also a partner in the project.

“This will represent a quantum leap for the Chinese community,” said Shude Mao, professor of astrophysics at the National Astronomical Observatories of China in Beijing.

Mao said the project represented an opportunity for Chinese scientists to increase the scale of their ambitions as they study the origin of planets, black holes and dark matter.

TMT is unlikely to be the largest telescope for long, however, as the European Extremely Large Telescope will surpass it in size and power after it is constructed in Chile's Atacama Desert.

ESA: ESO's Extremely Large Telscope (E-ELT) Funding Approved

Construction of the world's largest telescope, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), will finally push through with the approval of the funding for the project, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO.

A joint collaboration between 15 countries, the telescope which will be built in Chile, will be the world's largest ground-based optical telescope.

ESO officials said preparatory work will soon begin at the planned site of the E-ELT at the Cerro Armazones mountain in the central part of Chile's Atacama Desert.

The ESO chose the location because of the optimal weather conditions, such as clear skies and around 320 nights of the year, in the area.

The E-ELT's primary mirror will be a staggering 138 feet (42 meters) wide, bigger that the Keck Observatory in Hawaii which has a mirror that measures 33 feet (10 meters) wide, and the Subaru telescope, also in Hawaii, that has 27 feet (8.2 m) wide.

The approved 2012 budget includes funding for initial work on the E-ELT project, such as the development of access roads to the telescope site and early construction efforts on one of the telescope's five mirrors which are expected to begin in early 2012, ESO officials said in a statement.

"The E-ELT is starting to become reality," ESO Director General Tim de Zeeuw said. "However, with a project of this size it is expected that approval of the extra expenditure will take time. Council at the same time recognizes that preparatory work must start now in order for the project to be ready for a full start of construction in 2012."

The ESO governing body is expected to make a final approval decision for the entire E-ELT project in mid-2012, with the world's largest telescope finally operational early in the next decade, ESO officials said.

ESO already has three observatories in Chile, including the Paranal Observatory, which houses the Very Large Telescope, and the La Silla Observatory, which hosts the New Technology Telescope.

The birth of a Radio Telescope 30 times larger than Earth

Artist's impression of Spektr-R, the 10-meter space-borne antenna of the RadioAstron project. Credit: Lavochkin Association.

On 15 November 2011, the Effelsberg 100-meter radio telescope, together with three Russian and one Ukrainian telescope, took part in the first interferometric observations with the orbiting 10-meter antenna Spektr-R of the Russian RadioAstron project. 

The observations were made at a wavelength of 18 centimeters, targeting the distant, bright, and very compact quasar 0212+735. 

Interferometric signals have been successfully detected by the RadioAstron team between Spektr-R and the ground antennas, setting a new world record for the size of a radio interferometer and opening a new era in interferometric studies of cosmic radio emission. 

Hobby-Eberly Telescope Finds Three planets - each orbiting its own giant, dying star

Three planets - each orbiting its own giant, dying star - have been discovered by an international research team led by Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.

Penn State is a major partner in the design, construciton, and operation of this telescope, which is one of the largest in the world. In 1992, Wolszczan became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. 

Credit: Marty Harris/McDonald Obs./UT-Austin

One of the massive, dying stars has an additional mystery object orbiting it, according to team leader Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, who, in 1992, became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. 

The new research is expected to shed light on the evolution of planetary systems around dying stars. It also will help astronomers to understand how metal content influences the behavior of dying stars.

 

The research will be published in December in the Astrophysical Journal. The first author of the paper is Sara Gettel, a graduate student from Penn State's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the paper is co-authored by three graduate students from Poland.

The three newly-discovered planetary systems are more evolved than our own solar system. "Each of the three stars is swelling and has already become a red giant - a dying star that soon will gobble up any planet that happens to be orbiting too close to it," Wolszczan said.

"While we certainly can expect a similar fate for our own Sun, which eventually will become a red giant and possibly will consume our Earth we won't have to worry about it happening for another five-billion years." 

Wolszczan also said that one of the massive, dying stars - BD +48 738 - is accompanied not only by an enormous, Jupiter-like planet, but also by a second, mystery object.

According to the team, this object could be another planet, a low-mass star, or - most interestingly - a brown dwarf, which is a star-like body that is intermediate in mass between the coolest stars and giant planets.

"We will continue to watch this strange object and, in a few more years, we hope to be able to reveal its identity," Wolszczan said.

 

Gloria: Providing worldwide acess to robotic telescope network

Amateur astronomers wanting to observe celestial bodies soon won’t be limited to just their own personal telescopes, or visits to the local public observatory.

Starting next year, the first in a worldwide network of robotic telescopes will be going online, which users from any location on the planet will be able to operate for free via the internet.

Known as Gloria (GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science), the three-year European project will ultimately include 17 telescopes on four continents, run by 13 partner groups from Russia, Chile, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain.

Not only will users be able to control the telescopes from their computers, but they will also have access to the astronomical databases of Gloria and other organizations.

SETI: Private Donors help re-open mothballed telescopes

Telescopes looking for extra terrestrial intelligence should re-open within weeks after donors replaced income lost in public funding cuts.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, had to shut the $30m (£18.3m) Allen Telescope Array in April.

Donors, including actress Jodie Foster, raised more than $200,000 (£122,000).

The 42 radio telescopes, in northern California, search space for potential signals from alien life forms.
Ms Foster was one of more than 2,400 people who contributed to the fund to save the Allen Telescope Array.

She played the lead role of an astronomer looking for evidence of aliens in the 1997 film Contact.

Science Fiction into Science Fact
In a statement on the fund-raising website she explained her support: "The Allen Telescope Array could turn science fiction into science fact but only if it is actively searching the skies."

Another donor was the Apollo 8 astronaut, Bill Anders.

The SETI Institute says the fund should be enough to keep the telescopes operating until the end of the year, though the plan is still dependent on the institute receiving money from the US Air Force to track space debris that could damage satellites.

SETI Institute Astronomer Seth Shostak told BBC News, the deal with the Air Force is not yet done but he said he is fairly confident it will go through. Even then the money will need to be ratified by Congress and so there may be a delay. He hopes the array will re-open in September or October.

Thomas Pierson, SETI chief executive, agreed that a deal with the Air Force, combined with the donations, should allow the array to start listening for space chatter once again.

Donors help re-open mothballed telescopes searching for ET

Kat-7 Astronomers: Closing on Black Hole mystery

Astronomers could soon be a step closer to unravelling the mystery of why galaxies are smaller than astronomers predict.

From January next year, the Karoo Array Telescope-7 (Kat-7) in South Africa will be able to investigate whether black holes are holding back galaxy growth, as well as probing other phenomena such as gravitational waves and cosmic rays.

Kat-7 has been built in the Northern Cape as a test bed for a 3,000km-wide array that will become fully operational in 2024.

Small black holes, five or 10 times the mass of our Sun, and those up to a billion times larger - deemed "supermassive" - had been thought to only consume matter.

But scientists have discovered that they emit jets of matter too, and - given that massive black holes are believed to lie at the heart of galaxies - these jets could explain why galaxies are smaller than predicted.
The period during which these galactic geysers are active varies with the mass of the black hole.

Those small black holes can be active for a brief period every 20 years. However, supermassive black holes can be active for millions of years and then be dormant for a billion.

These jets can stretch out for up to 100,000 light-years. This means to travel from the black hole to the end of the jet would take 100,000 years travelling at light speed.

The jets are visible to scientists at radio wavelengths. By analysing the jets' radio waves, scientists can gauge how much energy has been released. That amount of energy could be key to understanding the alleged holding back of galaxy growth.

CFHT News: Elliptical galaxies much younger than previously thought

The standard model for elliptical galaxies formation is challenged by a new result uncovered by an international team of astronomers from the Atlas3D collaboration.

Team members from CNRS, CEA, CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope), and the Observatoire de Lyon published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society the first results from their study on two elliptical galaxies exhibiting features characteristic of a fairly recent merging, suggesting they are five times younger than commonly thought.

The common belief on the mass assembly history of massive elliptical galaxies based on their stellar population leads to an age between 7 and 10 billion years old. A different story is shaping up based on ultra-deep images of two galaxies observed with the MegaCam camera mounted on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT, CNRC/CNRS/University of Hawaii).

Astronomers from CNRS, CEA, CFHT, and the Observatoire de Lyon, all members of the Atlas3D international collaboration, established that the formation of the two studied elliptical galaxies (NGC 680 & NGC 5557) originated from a merger of two giant spiral galaxies that took place only 1 to 3 billions years ago.

Such age estimate is based on the presence of ultra faint filaments in the distant outskirts of the galaxies. These features called tidal streams in the astronomers parlance are typical residuals from a galaxy merger.

(Click here for a description from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies)

They are known not to survive in this shape and brightness for more than a few billion years, hence the new age estimate of the resulting elliptical galaxies. These structures were detected for the first time thanks to a very-deep imaging technique boosting the capabilities of CFHT's wide-field optical imager MegaCam.

The Atlas3D team conducts a systematic survey of more than one hundred nearby elliptical galaxies. If the current result based on the first two galaxies is confirmed on the larger sample, i.e. faint extended features are frequently detected, the standard model for elliptical galaxies formation should be revisited.

Russian Radio Astron: New space telescope is biggest yet

A Russian space telescope set to launch on Monday will be the biggest ever, a feat that perhaps makes up for the fact that it has taken more than 30 years to develop.

The RadioAstron, which was first conceived during the Cold War, only has a 10-meter antenna, which is tiny compared to the 100-meter-long antennas on Earth’s largest radio telescopes.

But combining the RadioAstron’s signals with those of earthbound telescopes in a process called interferometry creates images that are as sharp as those produced by a single satellite whose dish was as wide as the distance between the space telescope and its partner on Earth.

The RadioAstron will be launched to a distance almost as far away as the moon, creating a “dish” that, in effect, will be 30 times the Earth’s diameter. The resolution of its images will be 10,000 times that of images by the Hubble Space Telescope.

If that isn’t mind-boggling enough, to put it another way, its images will be exact down to angles of just seven microarcseconds, which is 0.000000001944 of a degree.

Inferometry has been used to make Earth-sized radio telescopes for the last few decades. The first space telescope dedicated to radio interferometry, HALCA, was launched by the Japanese Space Agency in 1997. Images by RadioAstron will have ten times greater resolution because its orbit will be ten times as far from Earth.

RadioAstron’s applications

RadioAstron will aim its sights on objects such as the nearby galaxy M87, which has a gargantuan black hole at its core. The satellite may get images from near the black hole’s event horizon, which is the boundary around which nothing can escape the black hole’s gravity.

The telescope will also look at the microwave radiation given off by water masers, which are clouds of water molecules in the discs of galaxies. Such data could help determine the rotation rate of galaxies and determine their distance from Earth.

Combining that data with data on the speed at which galaxies are moving can help with another calculation: how quickly space is expanding right now.

The telescope will also look at pulsars, which are the remains of exploded stars, and the lighthouse-like radio waves they emit, in order to understand how dust and gas are distributed around them.

Qatar funds collaborative discovery of new exo-Planet

PhD students Grant Miller and David Brown used Scotland's largest optical telescope, the 0.9m diameter James Gregory telescope at the St Andrews campus observatory, to confirm the presence and measure the diameter of the new planet, contributing to the discovery of a new alien world.

The St Andrews team helped to find the new planet in record time thanks to teamwork and internet communications between astronomers in Qatar, the US, Germany, Denmark, and at the Universities of Leicester and Keele.

The group said this discovery was a good example of successful collaboration across international borders and time zones.

The planet, described as a 'hot Jupiter' which has been named Qatar-1b, adds to the growing list of alien planets orbiting distant stars discovered by scientists around the world.

These distant planets are detected by scientists who closely study the light emitted by stars. Because the planets orbit their parent star, and will regularly pass directly between it and the earth and block its light, causing a characteristic dip in the amount of light coming from the star.

While a huge number of stars are observed, only a few will have detectable planets.

In this case, Qatar's wide-angle cameras - located in New Mexico - took images of the sky every clear night beginning in early 2010. The digital images then were transmitted to the UK for computer analysis by collaborating astronomers at St Andrews, Leicester and Qatar.

Data from hundreds of thousands of stars was examined after it was extracted from the images, and the analysis narrowed the field to a few hundred possible stars.

The group followed up on the most promising candidates with Dr David Latham from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, making observations from Arizona to weed out binary-star systems with grazing eclipses that can mimic planetary transits. The resulting data measured the mass of the new planet.

Dr Latham said: "The discovery of Qatar-1b is a wonderful example of how science and modern communications can erase international borders and time zones. No one owns the stars. We can all be inspired by the discovery of distant worlds."

Qatar-1b is a gas giant planet, 20% larger than Jupiter in diameter and 10% more massive. It belongs to the 'hot Jupiter' family because it orbits 3.5 million km from its star, so close that it roasts at a temperature of around 1100 degrees Celsius. The orbital period is just 34 hours.

St Andrews astronomer Professor Keith Horne said: "Qatar-1b is just the beginning. With Qatar's new planet-hunting cameras, we should soon be finding smaller planets as well, hot Saturns and hot Neptunes, and ultimately, with a different technique, cool Earths.