Astronomers Archives - Defence Monitor

12 Jul

Hubble telescope finds mysterious black hole disc

Washington: Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a disc very close to a starving black hole - something that should not be there - based on current astronomical theories.The unexpected thin disc of material was found encircling a supermassive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away, according to a study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The presence of the black hole disc in such a low-luminosity active galaxy has astronomers surprised. Black holes in certain types of galaxies such as NGC 3147 are considered to…

04 Dec

Astronomers discover over 100 new exoplanets

Washington: An international team of astronomers have discovered more than 100 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) -- that revolve around stars other than the Sun -- in only three months, using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes.These planets are quite diverse and expected to play a large role in developing the research field of exoplanets and life in the Universe. The team involving researchers at the University of Tokyo and Astrobiology Center of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences investigated 227 exoplanet candidates based on data from second mission of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope (K2 mission), as well as using other space…

10 May

ESA’s mission to map dark energy gets detectors from NASA

Washington: NASA has delivered three detector systems for the European Space Agency's upcoming Euclid mission that aims to study properties and effects of dark matter and dark energy. "The delivery of these detector systems is a milestone for what we hope will be an extremely exciting mission, the first space mission dedicated to going after the mysterious dark energy," said Michael Seiffert, the NASA Euclid project scientist based at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Euclid will carry two instruments: a visible-light imager (VIS) and a near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). A special light-splitting plate on the Euclid telescope enables incoming light…

07 Feb

Black hole devouring star for a decade detected

Washington: Astronomers have detected a giant black hole that ripped apart a star and then gorged on its remains for an unusually long time -- about a decade, which is more than ten times longer than any observed episode of a stars death by black hole. Researchers made this discovery using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift satellite as well as European Space Agency's XMM-Newton. The trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes found evidence for a "tidal disruption event" (TDE), wherein the tidal forces due to the intense gravity from a black hole can destroy an object -- such as…