Best Telescope:Телескоп Гершель,OWL, JWST, greatest views

[ronatu]

Several critical items related to NASA's next-generation James Webb Space Telescope currently are being tested in the thermal vacuum test chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

This image shows the Optical Telescope Element Simulator, or OSIM, wrapped in a silver blanket on a platform, being lowered into the Space Environment Simulator vacuum chamber via crane to be tested to withstand the cold temperatures of space.

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Europe delivers first JWST instrument
 
9 May 2012

The first instrument to be completed for the James Webb Space Telescope, MIRI, was handed over by the European consortium that built it to ESA at a ceremony held in London today, and will now be delivered to NASA aiming for launch in 2018.



MIRI, the Mid Infrared Instrument, being prepared for vibration testing at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK. MIRI is the first instrument to be completed for the JWST mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2018.

Credits: Stephen Kill, STFC
 
The delivery of MIRI, the Mid InfraRed Instrument, marks an important milestone for JWST, an infrared space observatory with a collecting area more than two and a half times larger than ESA's Herschel Space Observatory – the largest infrared scientific telescope so far flown to space.

The handover comes at the end of a rigorous testing and calibration phase during which MIRI proved it can deliver cutting-edge science.

"The whole team is delighted that our hard work and dedication has resulted in a MIRI instrument that will meet all our scientific expectations," says Dr Gillian Wright, the European Principal Investigator for MIRI.



MIRI, the Mid Infrared Instrument, during ambient temperature alignment testing at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK. MIRI is the first instrument to be completed for the JWST mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2018.

Credits: Stephen Kill, STFC

"It is wonderful to be the first to achieve this major milestone for the JWST project. We can now look forward to significant scientific discoveries when it is launched."  

Once in space on JWST, MIRI, which comprises a camera and spectrometer, will operate at infrared wavelengths and at an extremely low temperature of -266°C – just 7°C above absolute zero.

The low temperatures are required to keep the instrument's own infrared emission from overwhelming the faint signals from astronomical targets of interest in the distant Universe.

MIRI will be capable of penetrating thick layers of dust obscuring regions of intense star birth, it will see galaxies near the beginning of the Universe, and it will study sites of new planet formation and the composition of the interstellar medium.

"It is an immensely challenging project, but together with our US and Canadian colleagues, European scientists and engineers have successfully risen to the challenge and are now delivering key parts of JWST to NASA," said Prof Mark McCaughrean, head of ESA's Research and Scientific Support Department.

"The JWST project is looking forward to receiving MIRI," says Dr Matthew Greenhouse, the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Project Scientist for JWST at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"The delivery of MIRI will mark the start of ISIM integration, a major milestone for NASA on the way to completion of JWST by 2018."

ESA is also leading the development of another of JWST's four instruments: NIRSpec, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, will obtain spectra of more than 100 galaxies or stars simultaneously to study star formation and chemical abundances of young distant galaxies.

JWST is scheduled for launch in 2018 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

It will be positioned about four times further from Earth than the Moon, 1.5 million kilometres beyond Earth's orbit around the Sun, around the gravitationally stable point known as L2.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMIU8TWT1H_index_0.html

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Overfed Black Holes Shut Down Galactic Star-Making

This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age. He

rschel is a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions.

"We want to know how star formation and black hole activity are linked," said Mathew Page of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom and lead author of a paper describing these findings in this week's journal Nature. "The two processes increase together up to a point, but the most energetic black holes appear to turn off star formation."

Supermassive black holes, weighing as much as millions of suns, are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the material is accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. Earlier in the history of the universe, these giant, luminous black holes, called active galactic nuclei, were often much brighter and more energetic. Star formation was also livelier back then.

Studies of nearby galaxies suggest active black holes can squash star formation. The revved-up, central black holes likely heat up and disperse the galactic reservoirs of cold gas needed to create new stars. These studies have only provided "snapshots" in time, however, leaving the overall relationship of active galactic nuclei and star formation unclear, especially over the cosmic history of galaxy formation.

"To understand how active galactic nuclei affect star formation over the history of the universe, we investigated a time when star formation was most vigorous, between eight and 12 billion years ago," said co-author James Bock, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and co-coordinator of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. "At that epoch, galaxies were forming stars 10 times more rapidly than they are today on average. Many of these galaxies are incredibly luminous, more than 1,000 times brighter than our Milky Way."

For the new study, Page and colleagues used Herschel data that probed 65 galaxies at wavelengths equivalent to the thickness of several sheets of office paper, a region of the light spectrum known as far-infrared. These wavelengths reveal the rate of star formation, because most of the energy released by developing stars heats surrounding dust, which then re-radiates starlight out in far-infrared wavelengths.

The researchers compared their infrared readings with X-rays streaming from the active central black holes in the survey's galaxies, measured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. At lower intensities, the black holes' brightness and star formation increased in sync. However, star formation dropped off in galaxies with the most energetic central black holes. Astronomers think inflows of gas fuel new stars and supermassive black holes. Feed a black hole too much, however, and it starts spewing radiation into the galaxy that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.

"Now that we see the relationship between active supermassive black holes and star formation, we want to know more about how this process works," said Bill Danchi, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Does star formation get disrupted from the beginning with the formation of the brightest galaxies of this type, or do all active black holes eventually shut off star formation, and energetic ones do this more quickly than less active ones?"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/news/herschel20120509.html

[Georgij]

Кстати. интересует вопрос по SPICA этот телескоп ещё планируется к запуску?

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Ура!

NASA Lends Galaxy Evolution Explorer to Caltech

WASHINGTON -- NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the cosmos. In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, a Space Act Agreement was signed May 14 so the university soon can resume spacecraft operations and data management for the mission using private funds.





"NASA sees this as an opportunity to allow the public to continue reaping the benefits from this space asset that NASA developed using federal funding," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "This is an excellent example of a public/private partnership that will help further astronomy in the United States."

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer spent about nine years as a NASA mission, probing the sky with its sharp ultraviolet eyes and cataloguing hundreds of millions of galaxies spanning 10 billion years of cosmic time.

"This mission was full of surprises, and now more surprises are sure to come," said Chris Martin, who will remain the mission's principal investigator at Caltech. "It already has scanned a large fraction of the sky, improving our understanding of how galaxies grow and evolve. The astronomy community will continue those studies, in addition to spending more time on stars closer to home in our own galaxy."

The spacecraft was placed in standby mode on Feb. 7 of this year. Soon, Caltech will begin to manage and operate the satellite, working with several international research groups to continue ultraviolet studies of the universe. Projects include cataloguing more galaxies across the entire sky; watching how stars and galaxies change over time; and making deep observations of the stars being surveyed for orbiting planets by NASA's Kepler mission. Data will continue to be made available to the public.

"We're thrilled that the mission will continue on its path of discovery," said Kerry Erickson, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The Galaxy Evolution Explorer is like the 'little engine that could,' forging ahead into unexplored territory."

During its time at NASA, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer made many discoveries involving various types of objects that light up our sky with ultraviolet light. Perhaps the most surprising of these was the discovery of a gargantuan comet-like tail behind a speeding star called Mira. Other finds included catching black holes "red-handed" as they munch away on stars, spying giant rings of new stars around old, presumed dead galaxies, and independently confirming the nature of dark energy.

For astronomers, the most profound shift in their understanding of galaxy evolution came from the mission's findings about a "missing link" population of galaxies. These missing members helped explain how the two major types of galaxies in our universe -- the "red and dead" ellipticals and the blue spirals -- transition from one type to another.

"We were able to trace the life of a galaxy," Martin said. "With the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's ultraviolet detectors, we were able to isolate the small amounts of star formation that are the signatures of galaxies undergoing an evolutionary change. We found that galaxies don't have a single personality, but may change types many times over their lifetime."

The mission also captured a dazzling collection of snapshots, showing everything from ghostly nebulas to a spiral galaxy with huge, spidery arms. A slideshow showing some of the top images can be seen here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/gallery-index.html .

Under the new agreement, NASA maintains ownership and liability for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft. When Caltech completes science activities, it will decommission the spacecraft for NASA. The mission's batteries and solar panels have an expected lifetime of 12 years or more, and the spacecraft will remain in orbit for at least 66 years, after which it will burn-up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. The agreement can be renegotiated when it expires in three years.

Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va., which built the spacecraft, will continue performing flight control functions for Caltech associated with monitoring and commanding GALEX and participating in mission planning. Universal Space Network will continue providing the ground stations for communicating with the spacecraft.

For graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/galex .

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex20120516.html

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Galaxy-hunting telescope to live on with private funding

NASA has handed over an ultraviolet space telescope to the California Institute of Technology, officials announced Wednesday, allowing the observatory to continue surveying the cosmos for at least three years.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer, launched in 2003, was placed in standby mode Feb. 7 after surveying about 80 percent of the sky with its 19.7-inch telescope and ultraviolet sensor suite.

NASA ended its financial support for GALEX after a review of operating missions by senior astronomers ranked GALEX lower than other projects seeking a limited supply of funding.

NASA is lending the observatory to Caltech of Pasadena, Calif., which will fund the mission's operations through private funding. The Space Act Agreement making the transfer possible was signed May 14, NASA said in a press release.

The continued GALEX mission will allow the telescope to finish its survey of the entire sky, permitting astronomers to catalog more stars, galaxies, planets and other objects across the universe.

"This mission was full of surprises, and now more surprises are sure to come," said Chris Martin, who will remain the mission's principal investigator at Caltech. "It already has scanned a large fraction of the sky, improving our understanding of how galaxies grow and evolve. The astronomy community will continue those studies, in addition to spending more time on stars closer to home in our own galaxy."

The GALEX handover is a first-of-a-kind event for NASA.

"NASA sees this as an opportunity to allow the public to continue reaping the benefits from this space asset that NASA developed using federal funding," said Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "This is an excellent example of a public/private partnership that will help further astronomy in the United States."

During its NASA mission, GALEX identified hundreds of millions of galaxies while peering 10 billion years back in time. GALEX also made discoveries on how spiral and elliptical galaxies transition from one type to another, according to NASA.

"We were able to trace the life of a galaxy," Martin said. "With the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's ultraviolet detectors, we were able to isolate the small amounts of star formation that are the signatures of galaxies undergoing an evolutionary change. We found that galaxies don't have a single personality, but may change types many times over their lifetime."

Before NASA suspended funding for the mission, GALEX was working on surveys of the galactic plane, magellanic clouds, and ultraviolet observations of the same stars being studied by NASA's Kepler telescope, which is seeking evidence of extrasolar planets in a patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Astronomers say the observations of the Kepler field will help planet-hunting researchers narrow their focus on nearby, hard-to-see stars that could harbor easier-to-see solar systems.

GALEX will itself hunt for alien planets around hot infant stars and detect ultraviolet flashes from exploding stars, or supernovae.

GALEX never studied bright regions in the Milky Way galaxy before because of concerns ultraviolet emissions could damage the instrument's detectors. After relaxing those constraints recently, officials began expanding the areas of the sky available for surveys.

The new regions of the sky being studied by GALEX include the luminous plane of stars in the galactic plane, a band of light in the direction of the center of the Milky Way. Martin said GALEX will finish the all-sky survey with its new lease on life.

It costs about $100,000 per month to operate GALEX, according to Deborah Williams-Hedges, a Caltech spokesperson.

The total cost for NASA to build, launch and operate GALEX since 2003 was about $150 million, according to an agency spokesperson.

NASA will maintain ownership and liability for the GALEX satellite, and Orbital Sciences Corp., GALEX's prime contractor, will continue operating the satellite.

The space agency originally considered transferring ownership of GALEX to Caltech.

According to NASA, the GALEX spacecraft's batteries and solar panels should continue working for 12 more years.

No other ultraviolet space observatories like GALEX are under development.

"We're creating a legacy database for the next several decades," Martin said.

Officials said they have received funding from the Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech, an Israeli research group, Cornell University, and the GAMA/Herschel-ATLAS/DINGO consortium, an international collaboration of 16 institutions.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1205/16galex/

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Hubble Sees A Spiral Within a Spiral
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/spiral-spiral.html

[ZOOR]

Euclid[/size]
Mapping the geometry of the dark Universe
De
nition Study Report

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1110/1110.3193.pdf

[Space Alien]

Астрономы обнаружили следы джетов в Стрельце[/size]

Астрономы обнаружили следы джетов - мощнейших выбросов материи - у черной дыры Стрелец A*, расположенной в центре Млечного пути. Статья ученых принята к публикации в Astrophysical Journal, а ее препринт доступен на сайте arXiv.org.

 В рамках работы ученые анализировали данные, собранные телескопом LAT на борту орбитальной обсерватории "Ферми". Анализ этих данных позволил обнаружить следы двух мощных гамма-выбросов. Такие выбросы возникают, когда вращающаяся черная дыра поглощает значительное облако газа и пыли. При этом материя разгоняется до околосветовых скоростей, излучая, в том числе и в гамма-диапазоне.

 Ученые подчеркивают, что пока говорить об обнаружении джетов рано, однако, если их открытие подтвердится, оно позволит прояснить многие вопросы современной космологии. Например, дыра в центре Млечного Пути считается довольно спокойной. Новые данные о джетах говорят, что ситуация могла быть совершенно иной 20-50 тысяч лет назад.

 Это, в свою очередь, позволяет заключить, что активность дыры довольно сильно менялась со временем. Сейчас, по оценкам астрономов, скорость роста дыры как минимум на три порядка ниже, чем должна была бы быть для достижения современной массы с момента формирования Галактики 13,2 миллиарда лет назад.

 Другим вопросом, который позволит прояснить открытие джетов, является возникновение гигантских гамма-пузырей с двух сторон плоскости Галактики. Пузыри, диаметр которых составляет около 25 тысяч световых лет, были описаны астрономами в ноябре 2010 года. Объекты, заполненные рентгеновским излучением, также были зарегистрированы при помощи телескопа "Ферми".

 Сам телескоп (изначально он назывался GLAST) был запущен на орбиту в июне 2008 года. Срок службы аппарата - около 10 лет, а стоимость - 650 миллионов долларов. Обсерватория располагается на орбите высотой 565 километров. Приборы аппарата используются для поиска следов темной материи, а также для изучения пульсаров, не видимых с Земли.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5852
http://lenta.ru/news/2012/05/31/jets/

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Астрономы уточнили время столкновения Андромеды и Млечного пути

Астрономы получили самые точные на сегодняшний день подтверждения будущего столкновения галактики Андромеды с Млечным путем. Сразу три статьи, посвященные масштабному исследованию, появятся в The Astrophysical Journal, а их краткое изложение приводит Nature News.

Галактика Андромеды (известная также как Туманность Андромеды) располагается на расстоянии 2,5 миллиона световых лет от Земли. Это ближайшая к Млечному пути галактика. Ученые достаточно давно предполагали, что в будущем эта галактика столкнется с нашей, однако точных подтверждений данному факту у них не было (при этом сама гипотеза стала довольно популярной, в том числе и в фантастической литературе).

В рамках работы ученые проанализировали движение 12 тысяч звезд в Андромеде. В частности, они смогли установить их поперечную скорость, а не только радиальную, как раньше. Первая представляет собой компоненту скорости, полученную проекцией на плоскость, перпендикулярную радиус-вектору звезды, в то время как радиальная - компонента, коллинеарная радиус-вектору. Последняя вычисляется, например, с помощью эффекта Доплера.

Новые данные позволили уточнить время столкновения - оно произойдет примерно через 4 миллиарда лет (ранее речь шла о 3-5 миллиардах лет). Также дальнейшее компьютерное моделирование динамики этого процесса позволило установить, что столкновение выбросит Солнечную систему на окраину новой Галактики - Солнце вместе с планетами окажется на расстоянии 26 тысяч световых лет от своего теперешнего положения.

При этом с вероятностью 0,1 Солнечная система улетит на расстояние 160 тысяч световых лет от центра Галактики. Примечательно, что моделирование показало, что у карликовой галактики M33 (таких галактик в окрестности Млечного пути встречается достаточно много) есть 9-процентный шанс столкновения с Млечным путем до того, как до него долетит Андромеда.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2012/06/01/andromeda/

NASA's Hubble Shows Milky Way is Destined for Head-On Collision
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/image/

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JWST instrument flies commercial across Atlantic

A sensitive infrared camera designed to detect the first light in the universe flew across the Atlantic Ocean in the belly of a jetliner Tuesday, ready to be integrated in the science module of the James Webb Space Telescope for exhaustive testing.



The MIRI instrument is one of four science payloads on the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/RAL/Astrium
 
The observatory's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, departed London Heathrow airport for the trans-Atlantic journey to Washington in the cargo bay of a British Airways passenger jumbo jet. The airliner touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport at about 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT).

MIRI will be transported by truck to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where it will be unpacked and prepared for installation into the telescope's instrument module.

Outfitted with a camera and a spectrometer, MIRI will seek out the first newborn stars formed after the dawn of the universe. Scientists say MIRI is the most sensitive infrared instrument ever built.

In order to observe such faint, distant objects, MIRI must be cooled to 7 Kelvin, or minus-447 degrees Fahrenheit. Infrared detectors need to be colder than the objects they observe in order to see them.

MIRI must be chilled to a colder temperature than the rest of JWST to see the flickers of infrared light as the universe's first stars illuminated more than 13 billion years ago.

The $8.8 billion Webb telescope is scheduled for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018. The observatory, a successor to the lauded Hubble Space Telescope, will be stationed at a point a million miles from Earth.

MIRI, which can observe in wavelengths between 5 and 28 microns, has its own dedicated cooler to achieve its necessary operating temperature.

It is sensitive enough to distinguish the age of ancient light, telling scientists which stars and galaxies formed soonest after the Big Bang.

"We'd like to try and identify very young galaxies, containing some of the first stars that formed in the universe," said Gillian Wright, MIRI chief scientist at the U.K. Astronomy Technology Center in Edinburgh, Scotland.

MIRI does this by resolving dust inside galaxies in the infant universe. Interstellar dust is generated, in part, by exploding stars.

"MIRI provides a diagnostic of whether there has been a previous generation of stars that had gone supernova and created dust," Wright said. "In the first generation of stars there would be no dust or black holes because there hadn't been time to make any."

Scientists will also use MIRI to study disks of debris around newborn stars closer to home, studying the constituent elements and chemicals that form the building blocks of planets.
 
The instrument was developed by an international consortium of institutions in Europe and the United states.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided MIRI's detectors, software and a cryogenic cooling system. The delivery of MIRI comes at the end of a comprehensive testing campaign, culminating in thermal and mechanical testing at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

"The whole team is delighted that our hard work and dedication has resulted in a MIRI instrument that will meet all our scientific expectations," Wright said.

The Fine Guidance Sensor, Near-Infrared Camera, and Near-Infrared Spectrometer - JWST's other three instruments - will be delivered to Goddard beginning later this year.

"It is wonderful to be the first to achieve this major milestone for the JWST project," Wright said. "We can now look forward to significant scientific discoveries when it is launched."

The Fine Guidance Sensor will arrive at Goddard in July. The Canadian Space Agency and Com Dev, its industrial partner, are completing testing of the guidance sensor, which will allow the Webb telescope to acquire and precisely point toward targets.

JWST's Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, will be shipped to Goddard in September, according to J.D. Harrington, a NASA spokesperson.

NIRCam is a joint project between the University of Arizona and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Environmental testing is planned before NIRCam's shipment to NASA.

The mission's Near-Infrared Spectrometer, or NIRSpec, is scheduled to be at Goddard by April 2013, Harrington said.

NIRSpec is undergoing a second round of thermal testing at an Astrium facility near Munich.

The instruments will be bolted inside the telescope's Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, in a clean room at Goddard. The ISIM is a specially-designed chassis to support JWST's science sensors.

"The JWST project is looking forward to receiving MIRI," said Matt Greenhouse, the ISIM project scientist at NASA. "The delivery of MIRI will mark the start of ISIM integration, a major milestone for NASA on the way to completion of JWST by 2018."

Engineers at Goddard are refining procedures for putting together the ISIM and science instruments. Technicians have practiced with models of the payloads to prepare for integration of the flight instruments.

Each component of the telescope, including the instruments and mirrors, is going through cryogenic testing individually, but the first time the telescope's optics will be collectively strained to their operating temperature -- an unimaginably crisp minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit -- will be in 2015 inside a massive cooling chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1205/29miri/

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Donated Spy Satellites Could Enable Cheaper Dark Energy Mapper Mission — If NASA had the Money
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/120605-spy-sats-dark-energy-mapper.html

NASA has a mission for grounded spy telescopes
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1206/04nronasa/

[Space Alien]

"Чандра" предсказал существование странствующих черных дыр[/size]

Астрономы, работающие с телескопом "Чандра", получили данные, которые говорят о том, что из галактики CID-42 при ее формировании была выброшена сверхмассивная черная дыра. Работа будет опубликована в Astrophysical Journal, ее препринт доступен в архиве Корнельского университета. Краткое сообщение об открытии публикует ScienceNow.

 Заключение астрономов основано на наблюдении за расположенной в четырех миллиардах световых лет от Земли галактикой CID-42. В видимом диапазоне у нее имеются два мощных источника света. Наблюдения с помощью телескопа "Чандра" показали, что при этом только один из источников излучает также в рентгеновском диапазоне.

 Галактика CID-42 представляет собой продукт слияния двух родительских галактик. Два мощных источника света поблизости от ее центра выглядят как две сверхмассивные черные дыры, лежавшие в центре слившихся галактик. Обе черные дыры в процессе поглощения окружающего материала должны излучать рентгеновские лучи, но "Чандра" наблюдает их только от одного из них.

 У этого, по словам астрономов, может быть два объяснения. Либо второй источник закрывают плотные скопления межзвездного вещества, либо второй источник может вовсе не содержать черной дыры, а быть таким скоплением. В таком случае первый источник является единственной черной дырой, возникшей в результате слияния черных дыр, которые лежали в центрах столкнувшихся галактик.

 Удаленное от центра галактики положение слившейся черной дыры астрономы объясняют тем, что она была выброшена из-за несимметричного излучения гравитационных волн в процессе слияния. Таким образом, наблюдение за галактикой может стать первым прямым подтверждением их существования, предсказанного еще Эйнштейном в его общей теории относительности.

 Несмотря на то что выбрасывание черных дыр должно быть очень редким явлением, сам факт такого наблюдения говорит о возможности существования многих странствующих черных дыр во вселенной.

 Космическая обсерватория "Чандра" была запущена на орбиту в 1999 году. Она предназначена для исследования космоса в рентгеновском диапазоне. Именно высокое разрешение камеры обсерватории позволило зафиксировать отсутствие рентгеновского излучения от одного из источников света в галактике CID-42.

http://lenta.ru/news/2012/06/06/blackexile/

[Space Alien]

Do Solo Black Holes Roam the Universe?[/size]

Even gravitational monsters can get the heave-ho. Two mysterious bright spots in a disheveled, distant galaxy suggest that astronomers have found the best evidence yet for a supermassive black hole being shoved out of its home.

 If confirmed, the finding would verify Einstein's theory of general relativity in a region of intense gravity not previously tested. The results would also suggest that some giant black holes roam the universe as invisible free floaters, flung from the galaxies in which they coalesced. Although loner black holes may be an entity that has to be reckoned with, they would still be rare, notes theorist Laura Blecha of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 Blecha, along with observational astronomer Francesca Civano of Harvard-Smithsonian and their colleagues took detailed x-ray observations of the distant galaxy CID-42, nearly 4 billion light-years from Earth. The team focused on the region after a Hubble Space Telescope survey revealed two compact visible-light sources within the starlit body: one of them at or near the galaxy's center, the other offset from the core. Because CID-42 appears to be the remnant of two giant galaxies that collided relatively recently, it seemed likely that one or both of the compact sources were supermassive black holes.

 Observations with NASA's Chandra x-ray Observatory revealed that only one of the compact visible-light sources—a blob that lies about 8000 light-years from the galaxy's estimated center—emits x-rays. The high-energy radiation is believed to be a sign that this blob is a supermassive black hole munching away on surrounding gas.

Blecha, who simulated collisions between galaxies that contain black holes, says the findings suggest two key possibilities. The sources could be two supermassive black holes brought together by the collision of the galaxies that formed CID-42. In that case, the central compact source, like its off-center black hole sibling, would emit x-rays. The absence of x-rays detected by Chandra would then have to be explained by a high concentration of dust that hid the high-energy radiation from the flying observatory.

 Alternatively, says Blecha, the central source could simply be a new hot spot of star formation, ignited by the recent galactic merger and truly devoid of any x-ray emission. The off-center x-ray-emitting source would then be a single black hole several million times as heavy as the sun, which is being expelled from the galaxy at about 2000 kilometers per second.

 That speed matches the velocity expected to be imparted by the asymmetric emission of gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that Einstein predicted would be generated when heavy objects like black holes are accelerated. If a black hole emits more gravitational waves in one direction than another, the body will recoil in the opposite direction with a speed fast enough to escape the galaxy, the team will report in two papers in the 10 June issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

 "This is the best candidate that people have seen for a recoiling supermassive black hole," says theoretical astrophysicist Cole Miller of the University of Maryland, College Park, who was not part of the study. If the recoil explanation holds up, the study "would offer observational confirmation that general relativity is a good description even in a region of strong gravity."

 Follow-up observations could help distinguish between the two exotic models. For instance, if the two bright visible-light sources are a pair of supermassive black holes that will ultimately merge, their pattern of visible-light emission might vary over time scales of a few years to a few decades, says Miller. Radio telescope studies could help pinpoint the location of the sources within the galaxy and indicate whether the more centrally located blob behaves as some supermassive black holes do—emitting a relatively strong radio signal—or more like a region of intense star formation.

 Although it's tempting to think of the cosmos as filled with invisible rogue black holes flung out of their home galaxies and ready to gobble anything that comes near, homeless supermassive black holes would in fact be a rare commodity, both Miller and Blecha note. Every massive galaxy that astronomers have searched for a central black hole has contained one, indicating that the beasts aren't kicked to the curb very often, Miller says. But because supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies produce winds and jets of material that regulate star formation, the rare expulsion of the gravitational guzzlers could alter the evolution of the galaxies they once called home, Blecha says.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/do-solo-black-holes-roam-the-uni.html?ref=hp

[pkl]

С ленты новостей:

06.06.2012 / 10:27   НАСА получило от американских разведчиков два "ненужных" спутника-телескопа


       Американское Национальное управление разведки, управляющее работой большинства американских разведывательных спутников, согласилось передать НАСА два космических телескопа, которые по своим показателям превосходят знаменитый телескоп Хаббл. В рамках ранее проведенной пресс-конференции, руководство НАСА заявило, что оба телескопа пока не полностью достроены, однако в любом случае часть работ выполнена и для НАСА это уже является существенным, так как ведомство находится в режиме жесткой экономии средств.
       В НАСА полагают, что один из двух подаренных аппаратов может стать базой для строительства ранее анонсированного телескопа WFIRST, который должен работать в инфракрасном спектре. Теперь, ведомству предстоит добиться от Конгресса США выделения остальных средств, необходимых для продолжения строительства. Впрочем, даже если такие средства и будут выделены, новые телескопы отправятся в космос уже в следующем десятилетии.
       В Национальном управлении разведки говорят, что фактически передают НАСА не спутники как таковые, а платформу - набор оборудования, который изначально был предназначен для ведения космической разведки. Отказаться от реализации двух спутников было решено еще полтора года назад и тогда же НАСА получило первое предложение о получении аппаратного обеспечения, а также всех технических данных по нему. В НАСА говорят, что уже год хранят оборудование и всю инфраструктуру для спутников, за что уже заплатили порядка 100 000 долларов.
       Оба набора оборудования обладают примерно схожими характеристиками: основное зеркало на 2,4 метра, что соответствует Хабблу, однако за счет иной конструкции телескопа, а также за счет ряда внутренних усовершенствований, новинки позволяют получать почти в 100 раз более качественные фото в сравнении с Хабблом. На практике это позволит более детально изучать космическое пространство, пишет Cyber Security.

:?:

[instml]

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12986

[instml]

ИК реликтовое излучение?

NASA's Spitzer Finds First Objects Burned Furiously

These two panels show the same slice of sky in the constellation Bo

[ronatu]

First Flight Instrument Delivered For James Webb Space Telescope   WASHINGTON -- The first of four instruments to fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has been delivered to NASA. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) will allow scientists to study cold and distant objects in greater detail than ever before.

MIRI arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., May 29. It has been undergoing inspection before being integrated into Webb's science instrument payload known as the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM).

Assembled at and shipped from the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom, MIRI was developed by a consortium of 10 European institutions and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., after having been handed over to the European Space Agency.

MIRI will observe light with wavelengths in the mid-infrared range of 5 microns to 28 microns, which is a longer wavelength than human eyes can detect. It is the only instrument of the four with this particular ability to observe the physical processes occurring in the cosmos.
"MIRI will enable Webb to distinguish the oldest galaxies from more evolved objects that have undergone several cycles of star birth and death," said Matt Greenhouse, ISIM project scientist at Goddard. "MIRI also will provide a unique window into the birth places of stars which are typically enshrouded by dust that shorter wavelength light cannot penetrate."

MIRI's sensitive detectors will allow it to observe light, cool stars in very distant galaxies; unveil newly forming stars within our Milky Way; find signatures of the formation of planets around stars other than our own; and take imagery and spectroscopy of planets, comets and the outermost bits of debris in our solar system. MIRI's images will enable scientists to study an object's shape and structure.

The most powerful space telescope ever built, Webb is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Webb's four instruments will reveal how the universe evolved from the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system. Webb is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

[ronatu]

MIRI's sensitive camera and spectrograph will be able to see far away in time and space, back to a time when galaxies were young.

Because the universe is expanding, the light from stars similar to our Sun in these galaxies has been redshifted to mid-infrared wavelengths. MIRI will be able to detect these. MIRI is also equipped with a complex coronagraph, which blocks the glare of nearby bright objects to allow clear observations of faint objects.
 
Diagram of MIRI. See a labeled image MIRI will play a large role in Webb's mission to understand faraway galaxy formation and evolution, the physical process of star formation, and the creation of the heavier chemical elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron.

MIRI will operate in the 5- to 28-micron wavelength range.

MIRI is being built by the MIRI Consortium, a group that consists of scientists and engineers from European countries, a team from the Jet Propulsion Lab in California, and scientists from several U.S. institutions.

[ronatu]

http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telescope/technology_at_the_extremes/webb_instruments.php#miri