Latest Stellar evolution Stories
Astronomers find cosmic dust annoying when it blocks their view of the heavens, but without it the universe would be devoid of stars. Cosmic dust is the indispensable ingredient for making stars and for understanding how primordial diffuse gas clouds assemble themselves into full"“blown galaxies."Formation of galaxies is one of the biggest remaining questions in astrophysics," said Andrey Kravtsov, associate professor in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of...
Observing the X-ray-bright gas in the halo of the Milky Way, ESA's XMM-Newton has gathered new data which favor a process involving fountains of hot gas in our Galaxy. Such a scenario, with the gas flowing from the galactic disc into the halo where it then condenses into cooler clouds and subsequently falls back to the disc, confirms the importance of supernova explosions in forging the evolution of the interstellar medium and of the entire Galaxy.The interstellar medium (ISM) in the Milky...
Elliptical galaxies were once thought to be aging star cities whose star-making heyday was billions of years ago.But new observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are helping to show that elliptical galaxies still have some youthful vigor left, thanks to encounters with smaller galaxies.Images of the core of NGC 4150, taken in near-ultraviolet light with the sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), reveal streamers of dust and gas and clumps of young, blue stars that are significantly...
Sometimes when you're looking for one thing, you find something completely different and unexpected. In the scientific endeavor, such serendipity can lead to new discoveries. Today, researchers who found the first hypervelocity stars escaping the Milky Way announced that their search also turned up a dozen double-star systems. Half of those are merging and might explode as supernovae in the astronomically near future.All of the newfound binary stars consist of two white dwarfs. A white dwarf...
OSU's Kazantzidis studies the behavior of galaxies, black holes through modeling & simulation at the Ohio Supercomputer CenterAn Ohio State University astronomer is working to unlock some of the mysteries surrounding the formation of vast galaxies and the evolution of massive black holes with his own large constellation of silicon wafers.Over the last year, two research teams led by Stelios Kazantzidis, a Long-Term Fellow at the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP) at...
New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, provided direct evidence that young galaxies can grow by sucking in the cool gas around them and using it as fuel for the formation of many new stars. In the first few billion years after the Big Bang the mass of a typical galaxy increased dramatically and understanding why this happened is one of the hottest problems in modern astrophysics. The results appear in the October 14 issue of the journal Nature.The first...
by Kitta MacPherson, Princeton UniversityFor scientists, supernovae are true superstars -- massive explosions of huge, dying stars that shine light on the shape and fate of the universe.For a brief burst of time, supernovae can radiate more energy than the sun will emit in its lifetime. With the potential energy of 25 hundred trillion trillion nuclear weapons, they can outshine entire galaxies, producing some of the biggest explosions ever seen, and helping track distances across the...
Astronomers believe they have discovered the origin of our universe's first super-massive black holes, which formed some 13 billion years ago.The discovery fills in a missing chapter of our universe's early history, and could help write the next chapter -- in which scientists better understand how gravity and dark matter formed the universe as we know it.In the journal Nature, Ohio State University astronomer Stelios Kazantzidis and colleagues describe computer simulations in which they...
A team of European researchers have pinpointed a magnetar--an unusual type of neutron star that possesses an immensely powerful magnetic field--that was formed by a star that had at least 40 times more mass than our solar system's sun.The discovery, they say, could force scientists to rethink current theories of star evolution, and specifically, the amount of mass needed to form a black hole.According to the scientific website PhysOrg.com, "This proves for the first time that magnetars...
Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. The discovery overturns the notion that novae explosions lack the power to emit such high-energy radiation.A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. The outburst occurs when a white dwarf in a binary system erupts in an enormous thermonuclear explosion."In human terms, this was an...
Latest Stellar evolution Reference Libraries
The prominent feature that allows for the existence of life on Earth is the Sun. Radiation from our closest star provides heat and energy to our planet, driving biological processes and providing the necessary conditions for liquid water to naturally exist. But our Sun is only but one star in this vast Universe. And as it turns out, most stars are quite different than the one that illuminates our day. For this reason, scientists have, for hundreds of years, attempted to study the other...
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram -- In stellar astronomy, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram) shows the relation between the absolute magnitude and the spectral types of stars. It was invented around 1910 by Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. There are two equivalent forms. One is the observer's form which plots the color of the star on one axis and the absolute magnitude on the other axis. The theoretician's form plots the temperature of the star on one axis and the...
White Dwarf -- A white dwarf is a a star supported by electron degeneracy. A star like our Sun will become a white dwarf when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, such a star goes through a red giant phase and then expels most of its outer material (creating a planetary nebula) until only the hot (T > 100,000 K) core remains, which then settles down to become a young white dwarf. A typical white dwarf is half as massive as the Sun, yet only...
Supernova Remnant -- A supernova remnant (SNR) is made up of the materials left behind by the gigantic explosion of a star in a supernova. There are two possible routes to this end: either a massive star may cease to generate fusion energy in its core, and collapse inward under the force of its own gravity, or a white dwarf star may accumulate material from a companion star until it reaches a critical mass and undergoes a similar collapse. In either case, the resulting supernova...
Supernova -- A supernova is a star that increases its brightness drastically within a matter of days, making it appear as if a "new" star was born (hence "nova"). The "super" prefix distinguishes it from a mere nova, which also involves a star increasing in brightness, though to a lesser extent and through a much different mechanism. Astronomers have classified supernovae in several classes, according to the lines of different elements that appear in their spectra. The first...
