ESA NASA Hubble Image: Spiral galaxy in Serpens

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a beautiful spiral galaxy known as PGC 54493, located in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent). 

This galaxy is part of a galaxy cluster that has been studied by astronomers exploring an intriguing phenomenon known as weak gravitational lensing.

This effect, caused by the uneven distribution of matter (including dark matter) throughout the Universe, has been explored via surveys such as the Hubble Medium Deep Survey.

Dark matter is one of the great mysteries in cosmology. It behaves very differently from ordinary matter as it does not emit or absorb light or other forms of electromagnetic energy, hence the term "dark."

Even though we cannot observe dark matter directly, we know it exists. One prominent piece of evidence for the existence of this mysterious matter is known as the "galaxy rotation problem."

Galaxies rotate at such speeds and in such a way that ordinary matter alone, the stuff we see, would not be able to hold them together.

The amount of mass that is "missing" visibly is dark matter, which is thought to make up some 27 percent of the total contents of the Universe, with dark energy and normal matter making up the rest.

PGC 55493 has been studied in connection with an effect known as cosmic shearing. This is a weak gravitational lensing effect that creates tiny distortions in images of distant galaxies.

Credit: European Space Agency

Galaxy's Huge Black Hole Puts on Spectacular Fireworks Show - Video

The supermassive black hole at the center of a far-off galaxy is putting on a fireworks display of cosmic proportions.

Scientists captured the brilliant display in new images and a video tour of the spiral galaxy Messier 106 (also called NGC 4258).

NSF Karl Janksy Very Large Array

An amazing composite picture was created by combining data from three NASA telescopes and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Karl Janksy Very Large Array trained on Messier 106, which is about 23 million light-years away.

While the galaxy is spiral in shape, like the Milky Way, Messier 106 has two extra swirling arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light.

These features are called anomalous arms and intersect the galaxy at an angle instead of aligning with the main galactic disk.

The combination of data from multiple telescopes revealed that the swirling arms of Messier 106 are streams of shock waves and superheated gas.

The NSF telescope picked up radio waves from high-energy particles streaming from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

Infrared light data gathered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows that these bursts of particles create shock waves, similar to sonic booms, when they strike the main disk of the galaxy.

The shock waves heat up huge pockets of hydrogen gas to thousands of degrees.

Spiral Galaxy Messier 106

Spiral Galaxy Messier 106 has two extra swirling arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA /CXC /Caltech /P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA /STScI; IR: NASA /JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF /NRAO /VLA

The new composite image released by NASA earlier this month shows X-rays seen by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in blue; radio waves captured by the NSF's Karl Janksy Very Large Array are shown in purple; visible light data from the Hubble telescope can be seen in yellow and blue; and infrared light from the Spitzer telescope in red.

Chandra X-Ray images reveal huge, superheated gas bubbles above and below the plane of the galaxy.

This suggests that much of the gas inside the galaxy is heated to millions of degrees and then rides along the shock waves streaming from the black hole to the outer regions of the galaxy.

Researchers predict all the gas from the galaxy will be cast out within the next 300 million years unless it is somehow replenished. Since most of the gas is already gone, less gas is available for star formation.

Researchers using Spitzer estimate that stars are forming in Messier 106 almost 10 times more slowly than they are in the Milky Way.

The black hole at the center of Messier 106 is about 10 times larger than the black hole in the Milky Way and is sucking in material much more quickly.

Researchers hope to learn more about how the black hole is influencing the galaxy. The results of the new galaxy study were published June 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

ESA Herschel Image: Our flocculent neighbour, the spiral Triangulum Galaxy (M33)

Credit: ESA /Herschel /PACS /HerM33es Key Programme /C. Kramer /M. Boquien

The spiral galaxy M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, is one of our closest cosmic neighbours, just three million light-years away.

Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

Home to some forty billion stars, it is the third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and our own Milky Way.

M33 is popular with astrophotographers and from exceptionally dark sites it can even be seen with the naked eye.

Thanks to its orientation, we can enjoy a face-on view of the beautiful spiral structure of the galaxy's disc.

This image, from ESA's Herschel space observatory, shows M33 in far-infrared light, revealing the glow of cosmic dust in the interstellar medium that permeates the galaxy.

The patchy, disorganised structure of M33's spiral arms resembles a tuft of wool, leading astronomers to classify it as a flocculent spiral galaxy.

The brightest spots sprinkled along the spiral arms are dense pockets of gas and dust where massive stars are born.

The most prominent of these is NGC604, visible in the upper left spiral arm.

This is an enormous star-forming region where hundreds of thousands of stars are taking shape.

The image is a composite of the wavelengths: 70 microns (blue), 100 microns (green) and 160 microns (red).

At the shortest wavelengths, astronomers trace warmer dust, revealing individual regions of star formation and parent clouds.

At longer wavelengths, they detect emission from colder dust, outlining some of the cool dust reservoir along the galaxy's winding spiral arms. This is where stars may be born in the future.

The image spans about one degree on each side; north is up and east is to the left. The data were collected with Herschel's PACS instrument as part of the Herschel M33 extended survey (HerM33es) Key Programme to study the star formation in the Triangulum Galaxy.

Hubble Image: Spiral galaxy NGC 1084 holds many Supernovae

Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast), Acknowledgement: Brian Campbell

In this Hubble image, we can see an almost face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1084.

At first glance, this galaxy is pretty unoriginal.

Like the majority of galaxies that we observe it is a spiral galaxy, and, as with about half of all spirals, it has no bar running through its loosely wound arms.

However, although it may seem unremarkable on paper, NGC 1084 is actually a near-perfect example of this type of galaxy, and Hubble has a near-perfect view of it.

NGC 1084 has hosted several violent events known as supernovae, explosions that occur when massive stars, many times more massive than the sun, approach their twilight years.

As the fusion processes in their cores run out of fuel and come to an end, these stellar giants collapse, blowing off their outer layers in a violent explosion.

Supernovae can often briefly outshine an entire galaxy, before then fading away over several weeks or months.

Although directly observing one of these explosions is hard to do, in galaxies like NGC 1084 astronomers can find and study the remnants left behind.

Astronomers have noted five supernova explosions within NGC 1084 over the past half century.

These remnants are named after the year in which they took place—1963P, 1996an, 1998dl, 2009H, and 2012ec.

NASA Hubble observes image of spiral galaxy being ripped apart - Video

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a galaxy being pulled apart in deep space. 

The telescope took the picture of the galaxy, as it moved through a cluster of galaxies known as the Norma Cluster (Abell 3627). 

This area of the sky is also known as the 'Great Attractor,' because of the enormous gravitational forces being exerted here.

This is a Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky. 

The location of the Great Attractor is shown following the long blue arrow at bottom-right. 

The apparent destructive process observed by the Hubble Space Telescope is known as ram pressure stripping.

’Ram pressure stripping’ occurs if the intra-cluster gas, in the form of a ‘wind,’ is strong enough to overcome the gravitational potential of the galaxy to remove the gas contained within it. 

The image was actually taken in 2009, but it takes scientists years to study the complex images Hubble brings them.

Hubble Study in spiral Galaxy M83 reveals new super-powered small black hole, MQ1

Nearby spiral galaxy M83 and the MQ1 system with jets, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The blue circle marks the position of the MQ1 system in the galaxy (shown inset). 

Image courtesy M83 - NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (WFC3/UVIS, STScI-PRC14-04a).MQ1 inset - W. P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) and R. Soria (ICRAR-Curtin).

A team of Australian and American astronomers have been studying nearby galaxy M83 and have found a new superpowered small black hole, named MQ1, the first object of its kind to be studied in this much detail.

Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now.

The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all its power.

Curtin University senior research fellow Dr Roberto Soria, who is part of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and led the team investigating MQ1, said it was important to understand how stars were formed, how they evolved and how they died, within a spiral shaped galaxy like M83.

"MQ1 is classed as a microquasar - a black hole surrounded by a bubble of hot gas, which is heated by two jets just outside the black hole, powerfully shooting out energy in opposite directions, acting like cosmic sandblasters pushing out on the surrounding gas," Dr Soria said.

"The significance of the huge jet power measured for MQ1 goes beyond this particular galaxy: it helps astronomers understand and quantify the strong effect that black hole jets have on the surrounding gas, which gets heated and swept away.

"This must have been a significant factor in the early stages of galaxy evolution, 12 billion years ago, because we have evidence that powerful black holes like MQ1, which are rare today, were much more common at the time."

"By studying microquasars such as MQ1, we get a glimpse of how the early universe evolved, how fast quasars grew and how much energy black holes provided to their environment."

As a comparison, the most powerful microquasar in our galaxy, known as SS433, is about 10 times less powerful than MQ1.

Although the black hole in MQ1 is only about 100 kilometres wide, the MQ1 structure, as identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, is much bigger than our Solar System, as the jets around it extend about 20 light years from either side of the black hole.

Black holes vary in size and are classed as either stellar mass (less than about 70 times the mass of our Sun) or supermassive (millions of times the mass of our Sun, like the giant black hole that is located in the middle of the Milky Way).

MQ1 is a stellar mass black hole and was likely formed when a star died, collapsing to leave behind a compact mass.

ESO Image: Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 spills blood and guts - Video

Credit: NASA, ESA

This new Hubble image shows spiral galaxy ESO 137-001, framed against a bright background as it moves through the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 3627.

This cluster is violently ripping the spiral's entrails out into space, leaving bright blue streaks as telltale clues to this cosmic crime.

This new Hubble image shows ESO 137-001, a galaxy located in the southern constellation of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle)—a delicate and beautiful spiral galaxy, but with a secret.

This image not only captures the galaxy and its backdrop in stunning detail, but also something more dramatic—intense blue streaks streaming outwards from the galaxy, seen shining brightly in ultraviolet light.

These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space.

This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping—a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid.

The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.

This image also shows other telltale signs of this process, such as the curved appearance of the disc of gas and dust—a result of the forces exerted by the heated gas.

The cluster's drag may be strong enough to bend ESO 137-001, but in this cosmic tug-of-war the galaxy's gravitational pull is strong enough to hold on to the majority of its dust—although some brown streaks of dust displaced by the stripping are visible.

This video pans across the sky near to spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 in the constellation of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle), ending on a view of the galaxy itself. 

This delicate and beautiful spiral galaxy is undergoing ram pressure stripping, where streaks of bright gas are being dragged out into space by the cluster it is moving through. 

Credit: NASA, ESA

Studying ram pressure stripping helps astronomers to better understand the mechanisms that drive the evolution of galaxies.

For example, it will leave this galaxy with very little of the cold gas that is essential for star formation, rendering the galaxy effectively incapable of forming new stars.

ESO 137-001 is part of the Norma Cluster, a cluster of galaxies near the centre of the Great Attractor, a region of space that earned its name by being so massive, and having a gravitational pull so strong, that it is pulling entire galaxy clusters towards it.

This region is located around 200 million light-years from our galaxy, the Milky Way. Both our galaxy and its home group, the Local Group, are slowly being hauled towards this mysterious region.

Hubble also imaged ESO 137-001's neighbour, ESO 137-002, which is also known to have a hot tail of gas extending outwards into space.

Despite being relatively close by cosmic standards, catching even a glimpse of the Norma Cluster is no mean feat.

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)

Observed from Earth, the cluster lies close to the plane of the Milky Way and is obscured by a thick smog of cosmic dust but Hubble is up to the challenge, using new data from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

As with most images from Hubble, this is not just a pretty picture; it tells us a great deal about the harsh environment at the heart of a galaxy cluster, and the fate of galaxies like ESO 137-001 that find passage through it.

NASA ESA Hubble: IC 2560 in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump)

Credit: Hubble/European Space Agency and NASA

Lying more than 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

At this distance it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster—a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity.

This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it.

In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560's spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call a Seyfert-2 galaxy, a kind of spiral galaxy characterised by an extremely bright nucleus and very strong emission lines from certain elements—hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen.

The bright center of the galaxy is thought to be caused by the ejection of huge amounts of super-hot gas from the region around a central black hole.

There is a story behind the naming of this quirky constellation—Antlia was originally named antlia pneumatica by French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in honour of the invention of the air pump in the 17th century.

ESA NASA Hubble Image: Mysterious Old Spiral

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

This striking cosmic whirl is the center of galaxy NGC 524, as seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This galaxy is located in the constellation of Pisces, some 90 million light-years from Earth.

NGC 524 is a lenticular galaxy.

Lenticular galaxies are believed to be an intermediate state in galactic evolution — they are neither elliptical nor spiral.

Spirals are middle-aged galaxies with vast, pin wheeling arms that contain millions of stars.

Along with these stars are large clouds of gas and dust that, when dense enough, are the nurseries where new stars are born. When all the gas is either depleted or lost into space, the arms gradually fade away and the spiral shape begins to weaken.

At the end of this process, what remains is a lenticular galaxy — a bright disc full of old, red stars surrounded by what little gas and dust the galaxy has managed to cling on to.

This image shows the shape of NGC 524 in detail, formed by the remaining gas surrounding the galaxy’s central bulge. Observations of this galaxy have revealed that it maintains some spiral-like motion, explaining its intricate structure.

Spiral Galaxy Messier 96

This image of Messier 96 was the jury’s favorite.

Robert Gendler (USA) is a well known figure in the amateur image processing world. 

His version of Hubble's image of NGC 3190 is the default desktop image on new Apple computers. 

Robert submitted a number of excellent images into the 2012 Hubble's Hidden Treasures contest. 

Credit: Robert Gendler/NASA & ESA

Hubble Image: Abell 68 Space Invader

The gravitational field surrounding this massive cluster of galaxies, Abell 68, acts as a natural lens in space to brighten and magnify the light coming from very distant background galaxies.

In this photo, the image of a spiral galaxy at upper left has been stretched and mirrored into a shape similar to that of a simulated alien from the classic 1970s computer game "Space Invaders!" 

A second, less distorted image of the same galaxy appears to the left of the large, bright elliptical galaxy.

This image was taken in infrared light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, and combined with near-infrared observations from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

It is based in part on data spotted by Nick Rose in the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition.

› More information about the Abell 68 galaxy cluster

Image Credit: NASA/ESA

ESA Hubble Image: Cosmic "Flying V" of Merging Galaxies

Image courtesy ESA/Hubble and NASA.

This large "flying V" is actually two distinct objects - a pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 2184.

Both the galaxies are seen almost edge-on in the large, faint northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), and can be seen as bright streaks of light surrounded by the ghostly shapes of their tidal tails.

These tidal tails are thin, elongated streams of gas, dust and stars that extend away from a galaxy into space.

They occur when galaxies gravitationally interact with one another, and material is sheared from the outer edges of each body and flung out into space in opposite directions, forming two tails.

They almost always appear curved, so when they are seen to be relatively straight, as in this image, it is clear that we are viewing the galaxies side-on.

Also visible in this image are bursts of bright blue, pinpointing hot regions where the colliding gas clouds stir up vigorous star formation.

The image consists of visible and infrared observations from Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

ESA NASA Hubblecast 62: A spiral galaxy with a secret

Loading player...

Despite its appearance, which looks much like countless other galaxies, Messier 106 hides a number of secrets. In this episode of the Hubblecast, Dr Joe Liske (aka Dr J) takes us on a tour of the galaxy. Thanks to a new image, which combines data from Hubble with observations by amateur astronomer Robert Gendler, the galaxy’s secrets are revealed as never before.

Credit: ESA/Hubble

Check out the ESA NASA Hubble podcasts here

NASA Hubble Image: M 106 - A spiral galaxy with a secret

This image combines Hubble observations of M 106 with additional information captured by amateur astronomers Robert Gendler and Jay GaBany. Gendler combined Hubble data with his own observations to produce this stunning colour image. M 106 is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, a little over 20 million light-years away.

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and R. Gendler (for the Hubble Heritage Team). Acknowledgment: J. GaBany, A van der Hoeven.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope - with a little help from an amateur astronomer - has produced one of the best views yet of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 106. Located a little over 20 million light-years away, practically a neighbour by cosmic standards, Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own.

Despite its appearance, which looks much like countless other galaxies, Messier 106 hides a number of secrets. Thanks to this image, which combines data from Hubble with observations by amateur astronomers Robert Gendler and Jay GaBany, they are revealed as never before.

At its heart, as in most spiral galaxies, is a supermassive black hole, but this one is particularly active. Unlike the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which pulls in wisps of gas only occasionally, Messier 106's black hole is actively gobbling up material.

As the gas spirals towards the black hole, it heats up and emits powerful radiation. Part of the emission from the centre of Messier 106 is produced by a process that is somewhat similar to that in a laser - although here the process produces bright microwave radiation.

As well as this microwave emission from Messier 106's heart, the galaxy has another startling feature - instead of two spiral arms, it appears to have four. Although the second pair of arms can be seen in visible light images as ghostly wisps of gas, as in this image, they are even more prominent in observations made outside of the visible spectrum, such as those using X-ray or radio waves.

Unlike the normal arms, these two extra arms are made up of hot gas rather than stars, and their origin remained unexplained until recently. Astronomers think that these, like the microwave emission from the galactic centre, are caused by the black hole at Messier 106's heart, and so are a totally different phenomenon from the galaxy's normal, star-filled arms.

The extra arms appear to be an indirect result of jets of material produced by the violent churning of matter around the black hole. As these jets travel through the galactic matter they disrupt and heat up the surrounding gas, which in turn excites the denser gas in the galactic plane and causes it to glow brightly.

This denser gas closer to the centre of the galaxy is tightly-bound, and so the arms appear to be straight. However, the looser disc gas further out is blown above or below the disc in the opposite direction from the jet, so that the gas curves out of the disc - producing the arching red arms seen here.

Astronomers Discovery: Massive supply of fresh gas around modern galaxies

Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel - in this case, fresh gas - but astronomers have had difficulty finding the pristine gas that should be falling onto galaxies.

Now, scientists have provided direct empirical evidence for these gas flows using new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The team led by Nicolas Lehner, research associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, is presenting its work at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.

The team's observations using Hubble's two ultraviolet spectrographs, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, show large quantities of cool gas with very low quantities of heavy elements in the gaseous cocoons surrounding modern galaxies.

The lack of heavy elements indicates this gas in the circumgalactic medium of the galaxies has not been strongly processed through stars.

The members' work, "The Bimodal Metallicity Distribution of the Cool Circumgalactic Medium at z<1 font="font">" has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

Led by Lehner, the team of astronomers identified gaseous streams near galaxies through the absorption they imprint on the spectra of distant, bright background quasars.

The atoms in the gas remove small amounts of the light, and as the light from the quasars passes through the gas around galaxies, the chemical elements leave characteristic spectral "fingerprints" that allow astronomers to study the physical and chemical properties of the gas.

Lehner and collaborators searched for the signature of gas within about 100,000-300,000 light-years of galaxies, identifying this gas due to its strong hydrogen absorption, a known signature of circumgalactic gas.

NASA NuSTAR X-Ray Data analysis of Spiral galaxy

This new view of spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, includes data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.

High-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR have been translated to the color magenta, and superimposed on a visible-light view highlighting the galaxy and its star-studded arms.

NuSTAR is the first orbiting telescope to take focused pictures of the cosmos in high-energy X-ray light; previous observations of this same galaxy taken at similar wavelengths blurred the entire object into one pixel.

The two magenta spots are blazing black holes first detected at lower-energy X-ray wavelengths by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

With NuSTAR's complementary data, astronomers can start to home in on the black holes' mysterious properties.

The black holes appear much brighter than typical stellar-mass black holes, such as those that pepper our own galaxy, yet they cannot be supermassive black holes or they would have sunk to the galaxy’s center.

Instead, they may be intermediate in mass, or there may be something else going on to explain their extremely energetic state. NuSTAR will help solve this puzzle.

IC 342 lies 7 million light-years away in the Camelopardalis constellation. The outer edges of the galaxy cannot be seen in this view.

This image shows NuSTAR X-ray data taken at 10 to 35 kiloelectron volts.

The visible-light image is from the Digitized Sky Survey.

› NuSTAR data only

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DSS

NASA Hubble Image: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1097

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097, also known as Caldwell 67.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

In this image, the larger-scale structure of the galaxy is barely visible: its comparatively dim spiral arms, which surround its heart in a loose embrace, reach out beyond the edges of this frame.

This face-on galaxy, lying 45 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is particularly attractive for astronomers.

NGC 1097 is a Seyfert galaxy. Lurking at the very center of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of our sun is gradually sucking in the matter around it.

The area immediately around the black hole shines powerfully with radiation coming from the material falling in.

The distinctive ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation due to an inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy.

These star-forming regions are glowing brightly thanks to emission from clouds of ionized hydrogen.

The ring is around 5000 light-years across, although the spiral arms of the galaxy extend tens of thousands of light-years beyond it.

NASA Chandra Image: Spiral galaxy NGC 3627

The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. 

This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and ESA's ESO Very Large Telescope (yellow).

Credits: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./C.Grier et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/WFI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The inset shows the central region, which contains a bright X-ray source that is likely powered by material falling onto a supermassive black hole.

A search using archival data from previous Chandra observations of a sample of 62 nearby galaxies has shown that 37 of the galaxies, including NGC 3627, contain X-ray sources in their centers.

Most of these sources are likely powered by central supermassive black holes. The survey, which also used data from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxy Survey, found that seven of the 37 sources are new supermassive black hole candidates.

Confirming previous Chandra results, this study finds the fraction of galaxies found to be hosting supermassive black holes is much higher than found with optical searches.

This shows the ability of X-ray observations to find black holes in galaxies where relatively low-level black hole activity has either been hidden by obscuring material or washed out by the bright optical light of the galaxy.

Subaru Optics Image: Spiral structure of disk may reveal planets

An image of the disk around SAO 206462 captured with Subaru's  HiCIAO. A coronagraph blocks the direct light of the central star, which appears as the black, circular area in the image. Arrows show the two arms of the spiral structure around the star. Credit: NAOJ 

An international team of astronomers has used HiCIAO (High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next Generation Optics) to observe a disk around the young star SAO 206462.

They succeeded in capturing clear, detailed images of its disk, which they discovered has a spiral structure with two discernable arms.

On the basis of their observations and modeling according to spiral density wave theory, the team suspects that dynamic processes, possibly resulting from planets in the disk, may be responsible for its spiral shape.

This research may provide the basis for another indirect method of detecting planets. Scientists have known that planets form in a broad disk of dust and gas surrounding a star, a so-called "protoplanetary disk."

However, the composition of these special disks as well as the process by which they give rise to planets have remained a mystery.

The bright light of a central star makes it difficult to detect fainter objects around it or to capture a detailed image of the composition of the disk itself.

Recent research with HiCIAO, Subaru Telecope's "planet-hunter", has overcome some of those obstacles.

By masking the bright light from the central star, the instrument can then detect more detailed features of the star's disk and the objects that it contains. 

Amateur Astronomers' Help Needed to Study Andromeda Galaxy

Astronomers are asking the public to help find star clusters in Andromeda, a bright, neighbouring galaxy to our Milky Way.

CREDIT: Robert Gendler

A group of astronomers is inviting the public to join their star-hunting team in a search of the bright Andromeda Galaxy.

The project aims to identify star clusters in our neighboring galaxy, also known as M31.

All it takes to find the clusters in Andromeda is an Internet-enabled computer and a desire to help, said Anil Seth, the team's lead investigator. "No special training is required," he said.

The so-called "Andromeda Project," which began Wednesday (Dec. 5), will generate the largest sample of clusters from a single spiral galaxy when it is completed.

Scientists expect the project could identify 2,500 new star clusters when finished. This would provide useful goalposts to chart how the galaxy, which is on a collision course with the Milky Way, formed and evolved.

"The general benefit is to better understand how spiral galaxies form," said Seth, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah.

"Andromeda is the nearest example of a [spiral] galaxy, except for the Milky Way," he said. "We can study in detail things we can't see in larger distances."