The first time I saw this image taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory I instantly thought of dozens scenes in science fiction movies, games, and illustrations—interstellar ships about to come out of hyperspace portals or wormholes. Spectacular photo.
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This might look like a strange microscopic image, or even an aerial view of a sprawling city late at night—but in fact it’s what a 600-billion-billion-kilometre-wide section of the universe looks like.
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The Large Quasar Group isn’t just a psychedelic cover band, but also an enormous cluster of quasars forming what an international team of astronomers led by University of Central Lancashire are calling “the largest known structure in the universe.” When the name isn’t being reappropriated for British laser tag, its being used to describe the distant (and therefore aged) nuclei of galaxies which often group together in clusters; this cluster just happens to also be the largest such structure ever discovered, making it the de facto largest in the known universe. Resultantly, it also may challenge an Einstein-derived supposition that, “the universe, when viewed at a sufficiently large scale, looks the same no matter where you are observing it from.” Of course, you’d have to be incredibly huge to determine conclusively whether or not that’s the case, but that Einstein guy was pretty good at making educated guesses.
[Photo credit: M. Kornmesser, ESO]
Via: HuffPo UK
Source: Royal Astronomical Society
Australia’s Shire of Murchison is quickly becoming a hotbed for radio telescopes. As of of Friday, the territory is operating the world’s fastest radio telescope in the form of the Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). The 36-antenna grid’s eventual use of six phased array feeds, each with 188 receivers, will let it scan a field of view 150 times larger than the moon’s visible area while processing that information much faster than a typical single-pixel radio telescope feed — CSIRO estimates that an image of the Centaurus A galaxy that would take 10,000 hours to process with rivals should take five minutes with ASKAP. Ultimately, the array should grow to 60 antennas as part of the Square Kilometer Array, which includes South Africa in its hunt for pulsars, quasars and other unique parts of the universe. Just don’t get your hopes up for booking alien listening sessions anytime soon. Commissioning started virtually as soon as the ribbon was cut, and scientists have already scheduled their usage slots for the next five years. We’re sure we’ll get over any frustration when we see the first ASKAP results published within the next year.
Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder goes live as the world’s quickest radio telescope originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Astronomy just lost one of its vanguards, as Sir Bernard Lovell has died at 98. The UK-born scientist was best known as a cornerstone of radio telescope development. While he wasn’t the first to leap into the field, he established the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory to study cosmic rays in 1945 and organized the construction of what would ultimately be called the Lovell Telescope — a radio telescope so large and useful that it’s still the third-largest steerable example in the world, 55 years after it was first put into action. His work helped track some of the earliest spacecraft and was instrumental in confirming the first discovered pulsars and quasars. On top of his most conspicuous achievements, Sir Lovell played an important role in developing airborne radar during World War II and was lauded for having scientific curiosity long after he hung up his Jodrell director’s hat in 1980. Science will be poorer without him.
[Image credit: NASA; thanks, Darren]
Filed under: Science
Radio astronomy pioneer Sir Bernard Lovell dies at 98 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It was Bret Easton Ellis who coined the phrase, “The better you look, the more you see,” and it appears the folks down at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab agree. In what’s considered a “first,” the agency’s latest space-scouring probe, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, has turned on its X-ray vision to capture focused images of a black hole, dubbed Cygnus X-1, feeding on a nearby giant star. By tuning into these high-energy frequencies, scientists are getting a peak into a previously unseen side of the heavens at 100 times the sensitivity and 10 times the resolution of any preceding tech. The space agency plans to use the observatory’s powerful sight to suss out other known areas of mass X-ray activity like 3C273, an active quasar located two billion light years away and even explore G21.5-0.9, the fallout from a supernova within the Milky Way galaxy. NuSTAR’s first tour of galactic duty will span two year’s time, during which it’ll attempt to record imagery from “the most energetic objects in the universe, ” as well as track the existence of black holes throughout the cosmos. Impressed? Yeah, us too.
Continue reading NASA’s NuSTAR probe snaps first X-ray image of feeding black hole
NASA’s NuSTAR probe snaps first X-ray image of feeding black hole originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jun 2012 07:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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