Categoría: Astrofísica

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution. Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away.  The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure. The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photon-dominated region, or PDR. In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionised gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born. This ultraviolet radiation strongly influences the gas chemistry of these regions and acts as the most important source of heat.  These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of far-ultraviolet light from massive stars. The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our galaxy, and throughout the Universe from the early era of vigorous star formation to the present day. Owing to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula
Estimated read time 4 min read
Astrofísica Astronomía

James Webb captura detalles nunca antes vistos de la icónica nebulosa Cabeza de Caballo

30/04/2024
Radio City Córdoba

Tiempo de lectura estimado: 3 Minutos El telescopio espacial James Webb ha captado las imágenes infrarrojas más nítidas hasta la fecha de uno de los objetos más característicos de nuestros cielos, Leé más

This ground-based image of the Andromeda Galaxy shows the location of four fields where the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been used to study a wide variety of stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, ranging from faint main sequence stars like our own Sun, to the much brighter RR Lyrae stars, which are a type of variable star. With these measurements, astronomers can determine the chemistry and ages of the stars in each part of the Andromeda Galaxy. The field marked A is located on the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy’s disc. The field marked B is in the giant stellar stream, a long swathe of stars left over from a smaller galaxy that was engulfed by the Andromeda Galaxy. Fields C and D are in the halo, a sparse sphere of stars and dark matter that surrounds the galaxy’s disc. Hubble’s very long exposures, combined with its excellent image quality, means that it is able to distinguish individual stars in these fields, even though they look virtually empty in this ground-based telescope’s image.
Estimated read time 5 min read
Astrofísica Astronomía

Llega la llamarada gigante de un magnetar desde una galaxia lejana

28/04/2024
Radio City Córdoba

Tiempo de lectura estimado: 4 Minutos La misión Integral de la ESA ha detectado una explosión de rayos gamma procedente de la galaxia M82 y, con la ayuda de otros telescopios Leé más

This is an artist’s impression of a black hole drifting through our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole is the crushed remnant of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. The surviving core is several times the mass of our Sun. The black hole traps light because of its intense gravitational field. The black hole distorts the space around it, which warps images of background stars lined up almost directly behind it. This gravitational "lensing" effect offers the only telltale evidence for the existence of lone black holes wandering our galaxy, of which there may be a population of 100 million. The Hubble Space Telescope goes hunting for these black holes by looking for distortion in starlight as the black holes drift in front of background stars.
Estimated read time 6 min read
Astrofísica Astronomía

Qué es un agujero negro estelar y por qué no es peligroso el localizado cerca de la Tierra

27/04/2024
Radio City Córdoba

Tiempo de lectura estimado: 4 Minutos Los astrónomos estiman que 100 millones de agujeros negros estelares vagan entre las estrellas de nuestra Vía Láctea, ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey, Nick Risinger ( skysurvey.org Leé más