This sonification turns the orbits of a new seven-planet system, discovered by NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope, into sound. It begins at the center of the system with the innermost orbit and builds toward the outermost, introducing each orbit with a new sound that plays once per rotation around the central Sun-like star. It then focuses on two specific orbits in resonance, which creates a beating sound with the inner rotating twice in the same period as the outer rotates three times. Next, only the three outer-most planets are singled out as an orbital resonance chain before blending all seven together again. This is the first planetary system in which each planet bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any in our solar system.
Video credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Bishop’s University /Jason Rowe
A new study using the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) data has pieced together the first detailed, wide-area map of water distribution on the Moon. The new map covers about one-quarter of the Earth-facing side of the lunar surface below 60 degrees latitude and extends to the Moon’s South Pole. In this data visualization, SOFIA’s lunar water observations are indicated using color, with blue representing areas of higher water signal, and brown lower.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright
Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, scientists have discovered a black hole in a distant galaxy repeatedly nibbling on a Sun-like star. The object heralds a new era of Swift science made possible by a novel method for analyzing data from the satellite’s X-ray Telescope (XRT). When a star strays too close to a monster black hole, gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The leading edge swings around the black hole, and the trailing edge escapes the system. These destructive episodes are called tidal disruption events. Astronomers see them as flares of multiwavelength light created when the debris collides with a disk of material already orbiting the black hole.
Recently, astronomers have been investigating variations on this phenomena, which they call partial or repeating tidal disruptions. During these events, every time an orbiting star passes close to a black hole, the star bulges outward and sheds material, but survives. The process repeats until the star looses too much gas and finally breaks apart. The characteristics of the individual star and black hole system determine what kind of emission scientists observe, creating a wide array of behaviors to categorize.
On June 22, 2022, XRT captured Swift J0230 for the first time. It lit up in a galaxy around 500 million light-years away in the northern constellation Triangulum. Swift’s XRT has observed nine additional outbursts from the same location roughly every few weeks. Scientists propose that Swift J0230 is a repeating tidal disruption of a Sun-like star orbiting a black hole with over 200,000 times the Sun’s mass. They estimate the star loses around three Earth masses of material on each pass. This system provides a bridge between other types of suspected repeating disruptions and allowed scientists to model how interactions between different star types and black hole sizes affect what we observe.
Swift J0230’s discovery was possible thanks to a new, automated search of XRT observations called the Swift X-ray Transient Detector. After the instrument observes a portion of the sky, the data is transmitted to the ground, and the program compares it to previous XRT snapshots of the same spot. If that portion of the X-ray sky has changed, scientists get an alert. In the case of Swift J0230, astronomers were able to rapidly coordinate additional observations of the region.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Producer: Sophia Roberts (AIMM)/Science writer: Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park)/Editor: Sophia Roberts (AIMM)/Narrator: Sophia Roberts (AIMM)/Animator: Chris Smith (KBRwyle)/Project support: Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
New NASA and Durham University simulations put forth a theory of the origin of Saturn’s rings and icy moons – they may have formed following a massive collision between two moons orbiting the gas giant. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind to study the formation of Saturn’s rings and potentially habitable icy moons.
The animation highlights the “super” in supermassive black holes. These monsters lurk in the centers of most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and contain between 100,000 and tens of billions of times more mass than our Sun.
Any light crossing the event horizon – the black hole’s point of no return – becomes trapped forever, and any light passing close to it is redirected by the black hole’s intense gravity. Together, these effects produce a “shadow” about twice the size of the black hole’s actual event horizon.
The animation shows 10 supersized black holes that occupy center stage in their host galaxies, including the Milky Way and M87, scaled by the sizes of their shadows. Starting near the Sun, the camera steadily pulls back to compare ever-larger black holes to different structures in our solar system.
First up is 1601+3113, a dwarf galaxy hosting a black hole packed with the mass of 100,000 Suns. The matter is so compressed that even the black hole’s shadow is smaller than our Sun.
The black hole at the heart of our own galaxy, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced ay-star), boasts the weight of 4.3 million Suns based on long-term tracking of stars in orbit around it. It’s shadow diameter spans about half that of Mercury’s orbit in our solar system.
The animation shows two monster black holes in the galaxy known as NGC 7727. Located about 1,600 light-years apart, one weighs 6 million solar masses and the other more than 150 million Suns. Astronomers say the pair will merge within the next 250 million years.
At the animation’s larger scale lies M87’s black hole, now with a updated mass of 5.4 billion Suns. Its shadow is so big that even a beam of light – traveling at 670 million mph (1 billion kph) – would take about two and a half days to cross it.
The movie ends with TON 618, one of a handful of extremely distant and massive black holes for which astronomers have direct measurements. This behemoth contains more than 60 billion solar masses, and it boasts a shadow so large that a beam of light would take weeks to traverse it.
A new study using the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has pieced together the first detailed, wide-area map of water distribution on the Moon. The new map covers about one-quarter of the Earth-facing side of the lunar surface below 60 degrees latitude and extends to the Moon’s South Pole. In this data visualization, SOFIA’s lunar water observations are indicated using color, with blue representing areas of higher water signal, and brown lower.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright
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