Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity"

Using the infrared Herschel Space Observatory, Astronomers have discovered this ring of gas at the center of our Milky Way that looks like an infinity symbol - image annotated. The image was taken using two of Herschel's instruments -- the photodetector array camera and spectrometer (70-micron-light is coded blue; 160-micron light is coded green) and the spectral and photometric imaging receiver (350-micron light is red). Image Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity"

In a strange twist of science, astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory have discovered that a suspected ring at the center of our galaxy is warped for reasons they cannot explain. The above image reveals the ring with greater clarity than ever before. It can be seen as the yellow loop that appears to have two lobes, highlighted here with a white ribbon overlay. In fact, the ring, which is a collection of very dense and cold gas and dust, is twisted so that part of it rises above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers aren't sure how rings like this form in galaxies but some theories suggest they arise out of gravitational disturbances with neighboring galaxies. New stars are thought to be forming in the dense gas making up the ring.

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., astronomers were shocked by what they saw when they aimed the telescope at the galaxy's inner ring.

"[The] ring, which is in the plane of our galaxy, looked more like an infinity symbol with two lobes pointing to the side," JPL officials said in a statement. "In fact, they later determined the ring was torqued in the middle, so it only appears to have two lobes. To picture the structure, imagine holding a stiff, elliptical band and twisting the ends in opposite directions, so that one side comes up a bit."

Previous observations to date had only revealed portions of the ring. The Herschel Space Observatory, an infrared European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, sees long-wavelength infrared light, which can penetrate through the murky region at the center of our galaxy, allowing Herschel to get a more complete view.

"This is what is so exciting about launching a new space telescope like Herschel," said Sergio Molinari of the Institute of Space Physics in Rome, lead author of a new paper on the ring in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the center of our own galaxy."

The ring stretches across more than 300 light-years of space, and is about 15 Kelvin (that's minus 433 degrees Fahrenheit here on the Oblate Spheroid). The warmest material in this picture is blue, and the coldest is red.

The twist in the ring is not the only mystery to come out of the new Herschel observations. Astronomers say that the center of the torqued portion of the ring is not where the center of the galaxy is thought to be, but slightly offset. The center of our galaxy is considered to be around "Sagittarius A*," where a massive black hole lies. According to Alberto Noriega-Crespo of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, it's not clear why the center of the ring doesn't match up with the assumed center of our galaxy. "There's still so much about our galaxy to discover," he said.

Oh, and the reference to Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear? ... Whenever he launched himself to be in flight, he would always exclaim, "To infinity, and beyond!" Little did the writers and creators of Toy Story know that there was actually a destination as ... Infinity.

An abstract and full PDF of the Astrophysical Journal Letters study is online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5486.
(ht: herschel.caltech.edu & space.com)

[Article first published as Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity" on Technorati]

Dusty Galaxies Yield Up Hundreds Of Black Holes

A long-lost population of active supermassive black holes, or quasars, has been uncovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes. This image, taken with Spitzer's infrared vision, shows a fraction of these black holes, which are located deep in the bellies of distant, massive galaxies (circled in blue). This image was taken by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer at a wavelength of 24 microns. It shows the faintest distant objects ever observed with Spitzer at this wavelength. -- Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique

Dusty Galaxies Yield Up Hundreds Of Black Holes

Astronomers using specialized NASA telescopes have found hundreds of quasar/black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.

For decades, astronomers have long suspected that the universe held more quasars/black holes but were unable to discover where to look to find them until recently.

The newfound quasars are helping answer fundamental questions about how massive galaxies evolve. For example, astronomers have learned that most massive galaxies steadily build up their stars and black holes simultaneously until they get too big and their black holes suppress star formation.

The observations also suggest that collisions between galaxies might not play as large a role in galaxy evolution as previously believed, here on this Oblate Spheroid.

A growing black hole, called a quasar, can be seen at the center of a faraway galaxy in this artist's concept. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes discovered swarms of similar quasars hiding in dusty galaxies in the distant universe. The Spitzer observations were made as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey program, which aims to image the faintest distant galaxies using a variety of wavelengths. -- Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Mission News -

Missing Black Hole Report: Hundreds Found!
NASA -- Pasadena, Calif. -- 10.25.07

Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.

The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population. Their discovery implies there were hundreds of millions of additional black holes growing in our young universe, more than doubling the total amount known at that distance.

"Active, supermassive black holes were everywhere in the early universe," said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "We had seen the tip of the iceberg before in our search for these objects. Now, we can see the iceberg itself." Dickinson is a co-author of two new papers appearing in the Nov. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Emanuele Daddi of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique in France led the research.

The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores.

For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole. As the gas and dust are devoured by the black hole, they heat up and shoot out X-rays. Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view.
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Daddi and his team initially set out to study 1,000 dusty, massive galaxies that are busy making stars and were thought to lack quasars. The galaxies are about the same mass as our own spiral Milky Way galaxy, but irregular in shape. At 9 to 11 billion light-years away, they existed at a time when the universe was in its adolescence, between 2.5 and 4.5 billion years old.

When the astronomers peered more closely at the galaxies with Spitzer's infrared eyes, they noticed that about 200 of the galaxies gave off an unusual amount of infrared light. X-ray data from Chandra, and a technique called "stacking," revealed the galaxies were, in fact, hiding plump quasars inside. The scientists now think that the quasars heat the dust in their surrounding doughnut clouds, releasing the excess infrared light.

"We found most of the population of hidden quasars in the early universe," said Daddi. Previously, only the rarest and most energetic of these hidden black holes had been seen at this early epoch.
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"Theorists thought that mergers between galaxies were required to initiate this quasar activity, but we now see that quasars can be active in unharassed galaxies," said co-author David Alexander of Durham University, United Kingdom.
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The new observations were made as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, the most sensitive survey to date of the distant universe at multiple wavelengths.

Consistent results were recently obtained by Fabrizio Fiore of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy, and his team. Their results will appear in the Jan. 1, 2008, issue of Astrophysical Journal.
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