Latest Virgo constellation Stories
The Spitzer Space Telescope has helped astronomers reveal that the Sombrero galaxy is both a rotund and a slender disk galaxy. Sombrero is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, and is one of the first known to exhibit characteristics of two different types of galaxies. "The Sombrero is more complex than previously thought," Dimitri Gadotti of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, said in a press release. "The only way to understand all we know about this...
Astronomers have discovered the most distant galaxy cluster every found, 10.5 billion light years away from the Milky Way galaxy. Galaxy clusters contain thousands of galaxies and are considered important building blocks with the power to help unravel the mysteries of the early universe. Texas A&M astronomer Dr. Kim-Vy Tran said the cluster is made up of a dense concentration of 30 galaxies that is the seed for a much bigger cluster. "Our galaxy cluster is observed when the...
A team of Chinese astronomers have discovered a giant planet close to the exotic binary star system QS Virginis. Although dormant now, in the future the two stars will one day erupt in a violent nova outburst. Professor Shengbang Qian of Yunnan Observatory leads the team of scientists who report their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.QS Virginis lies in the direction of the constellation of Virgo and is about 157 light years from the Sun. The system is...
Astronomers studying new images of a nearby galaxy cluster have found evidence that high-speed collisions between large elliptical galaxies may prevent new stars from forming, according to a paper to be published in a November 2008 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.Led by Jeffrey Kenney, professor and chair of astronomy at Yale, the team saw a spectacular complex of warm gas filaments 400,000 light-years-long connecting the elliptical galaxy M86 and the spiral galaxy NGC 4438 in the...
NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, with a boost from a natural "zoom lens," have uncovered what may be one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever seen in the middle of the cosmic "dark ages," just 700 million years after the beginning of our universe.The detailed images from Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) reveal an infant galaxy, dubbed A1689-zD1, undergoing a firestorm of star birth during the dark ages, a time shortly...
The Sombrero, also known as M104, is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster, about 28 million light years from Earth. This Great Observatories view of the famous Sombrero galaxy was made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope. The main figure shows the combined image from the three telescopes, while the three inset images show the separate observatory views.The Chandra X-ray image (in blue) shows hot gas in the galaxy and...
A gigantic sonic boom generated by a supermassive black hole has been found with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with evidence for a cacophony of deep sound.This discovery was made by using data from the longest X-ray observation ever of M87, a nearby giant elliptical galaxy. M87 is centrally located in the Virgo cluster of galaxies and is known to harbor one of the Universe's most massive black holes.Scientists detected loops and rings in the hot, X-ray emitting gas that permeates...
New Haven, Conn. -- An international team of astronomers led by researchers at Yale has obtained key infrared observations that reveal the nature of quasar particle jets that originate just outside super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies and radiate across the spectrum from radio to X-ray wavelengths; a complementary study of jet X-ray emission led by astronomers at the University of Southampton, reaches the same conclusion. Both studies involve the jet of the quasar 3C273, famous...
CLEVELAND Â -- Case Western Reserve University astronomers have captured the deepest wide-field image ever of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies, directly revealing for the first time a vast, complex web of "intracluster starlight" -- nearly 1,000 times fainter than the dark night sky -- filling the space between the galaxies within the cluster. The streamers, plumes and cocoons that make up this extremely faint starlight are made of stars ripped out of galaxies as they collide...
JPL -- NASA salutes Space Day, observed this year on May 5, with a new dramatic image of the Sombrero galaxy. Space Day, held the first Thursday each May, is designed to inspire the next generation of explorers. The galaxy, called Messier 104, is commonly known as the Sombrero galaxy because in visible light it resembles a broad-brimmed Mexican hat called a sombrero. The new Sombrero picture combines a recent infrared observation from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope with a well-known visible...
Latest Virgo constellation Reference Libraries
The Virgo Cluster consists of galaxies at a distance of around 59 Mly away in the constellation Virgo. Containing between 1300 to 2000 galaxies the Virgo Cluster is the heart of the Local Supercluster. Its mass is estimated at 1.2 × 1015 M☉ out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc. Most of the brighter galaxies in the cluster were discovered by Charles Messier in the late 1770's and early 1780's, including the giant elliptical Messier 87. Messier...
Markarian's Chain is a stretch of galaxies forming part of the Virgo Cluster. The galaxies get their name because when viewed from earth they form a curved line. The other part of the name comes from the Armenian astrophysicist, B. E. Markarian. Markarian discovered their common proper motion in the mid 1970s. Member galaxies include M84 (NGC 4374), M86 (NGC 4406), NGC 4477, NGC 4473, NGC 4461, NGC 4458, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435. It's located at RA 12h 27m and Dec +13° 10"². Photo...
Virgo (the maiden) Constellation -- Location: Zodiac constellation, visible in both Hemispheres; Coordinates: Right Ascension: 13h; Declination: 0; Source: Associated with almost every major female deity in world-wide early civilizations The constellations that are included in the Zodiac - the 12 constellations recognized by Babylonian astronomers through which our Sun, moon, and planets appeared to travel during the course of a year - are considered to be among the oldest sky patterns...
Extrasolar Planet -- An extrasolar planet is a planet orbiting around a star other than the Sun. Extrasolar planets were first discovered in the 1990s as a result of improved telescope technology, CCD and computer-based image processing which allowed far more accurate measurements of stellar motions. The first extrasolar planets were reported by the astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan in 1993, orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. Subsequent investigation has determined that they are only planets...
Virgo Cluster of Galaxies -- This giant agglomeration of galaxies is the nearest big cluster of galaxies, the largest proven structure in our intergalactic neighborhood, and the most remote cosmic objects with a physical connection to our own small group of galaxies, the Local Group, including our Milky Way galaxy. This structure is another discovery by Charles Messier, who noted behind his entry for M91 The Virgo Cluster is extremely rich in member galaxies, with over 2000 large and...
