IAU General Assembly 2024’s Post

THE SOLAR ECLIPSE AFFECTS US BECAUSE WE ARE ONE WITH EVERYTHING: A University of Toronto astronomer’s research suggests THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS SURROUNDED BY A MAGNETIC TUNNEL THAT CAN BE SEEN IN RADIO WAVES. Jennifer West, a research associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, is making a scientific case that TWO BRIGHT STRUCTURES seen on opposite sides of the sky – previously considered to be separate – are actually CONNECTED AND ARE MADE OF rope-like filaments. The connection forms what looks like A TUNNEL AROUND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. #solarsystem #unity #solareclipse #equilibrium #jasnicaklaramatic https://lnkd.in/dktvKfuS

🌑 Today, we witness a significant astronomical event: the total solar eclipse across North America. As professionals and enthusiasts in the field of astronomy and related sciences, let's ensure we observe this phenomenon safely with proper solar viewing equipment. This moment of daytime darkness offers a unique opportunity for observation and study, not to be repeated in the contiguous US until 2044. Will you be watching? Click here to find out what time you'll be able to view the eclipse: https://lnkd.in/g4FXudrE

We now have the largest 3-D map of our cosmos ever created, thanks to a powerful instrument mounted atop a telescope in Arizona with a robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic “eyes” that look into the night sky. Over the last five years, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument—known in science circles as DESI—has measured the spectra of more than 30 million galaxies and 3 million quasars to determine how fast the universe expanded over 11 billion years. DESI’s announcement today is the result of an ongoing international collaboration comprising more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions, including astronomers at University of California, Santa Cruz with leadership roles in the project. And yet, as big as this news is, they say it’s just the beginning. “If the trends hinted here in this first-year dataset are confirmed in our Year Three analysis, this will be a major discovery,” said cosmologist Alexis Leauthaud, associate professor in UC Santa Cruz's Astronomy and Astrophysics Department. “This is going to be a tremendously exciting time to be part of the DESI collaboration.” Other collaborating professors at UC Santa Cruz include Connie Rockosi and J. Xavier Prochaska, also in Astronomy & Astrophysics—along with a phenomenal team of their undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who have been visiting the telescope on a regular basis to help with observations. #astronomy #science #space https://lnkd.in/g9CgUKP9 (Video credit: David Kirkby/DESI)

Were you aware of the different sources in #space emitting #XRays? This could be remnants of supernovae, black holes, neutron stars or the interstellar gas of the Milky Way. Researchers at the Dr. Karl Remeis Observatory, the Astronomical Institute of the Erlangen Center for Astroparticle Physics (ECAP) at #FAU scanned the skies from 2019 till 2022 to find such sources and have now published their #catalogue in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. #Astronomy #Astrophysics #XRaysInSpace #MovingKnowledge #SharingKnowledge https://lnkd.in/eSEz32_6

An international team of astronomers have used National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to determine key characteristics of a newly-discovered magnetar, Swift J1818.0-1617, to unprecedented levels of precision. When a neutron star forms with a fast pulsar-like spin and a magnetic field thousands of times stronger than a typical neutron star, it’s given the designation magnetar. These stars pack roughly double the mass of our Sun into a physical size on the scale of tens of kilometers— the size of a city. Full article: https://lnkd.in/e_DmEura

Welcome the new array telescope discoveries. Researchers led by Michael Shara, of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), using the new Condor Array Telescope, have observed the first example of two concentric shells surrounding a dwarf nova. Known as Z Camelopardalis, or just Z Cam, it was seen as a new star by the Chinese Imperial astronomers in the year 77 BCE, and it's located 530 light-years away. The Condor uses computers to combine light from several smaller telescopes into the equivalent of one larger telescope, and it has demonstrated to be able to detect and study astronomical features that are too faint to be seen with conventional telescopes. The findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (4 March, 2024). https://lnkd.in/emqq9HTb #physics #physicsnews #astrophysics #astronomy #condor #condorarraytelescope #zcam #zcamelopardalis #dwarfnova

Scientists are studying an excessively large red supermassive black hole, found within the merging galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (A2744) known as Pandora’s cluster. 🔭 These scientists believe the rapid growth and high black hole to galaxy mass ratio of this red supermassive black hole (A2744-QSO1) may represent the missing link between black hole seeds and the first luminous quasars, as they wrote in Springer Nature Group scientific journal Nature on February 14, 2024. Star 🌌 Springer Nature Group https://lnkd.in/ekmT7WfQ The Hubble telescope first discovered Pandora’s cluster in 2009 as part of a survey of distant galaxy clusters, and offers a window into the early universe, allowing astronomers to observe galaxies as they were billions of years ago and shed light on the evolutionary processes that shaped the universe into what we see today. Fascinating research into A2477-QSO1 is being done by this extraordinary international team, utilising gravitational lensing to investigate the properties of both the foreground galaxy cluster and the background quasar: Dr. Lukas Furtak, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 🇮🇱 Dr. Ivo Labbé, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology 🇳🇱🇦🇺 Dr. Adi Zitrin, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 🇮🇱 Dr. Jenny Greene, Princeton University 🇺🇸 Dr. Pratika Dayal, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen 🇳🇱 Iryna Chemerynska, Sorbonne Université 🇺🇦🇫🇷 Dr. Vasily Kokorev, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen 🇳🇱 Dr. Tim Miller, Yale University & Northwestern University 🇨🇦🇺🇸 Dr. Andy Goulding, Princeton University 🇺🇸 Dr. Anna De Graaff, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy 🇩🇪 Dr. Rachel Bezanson, University of Pittsburgh 🇺🇸 Dr. Gabriel Brammer, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen 🇺🇸 🇩🇰 Sam Cutler, University of Massachusetts Amherst 🇺🇸 Dr. Joel Leja, Penn State University 🇺🇸 Richard Pan, M.S., Tufts University 🇺🇸 Sedona Price, University of Pittsburgh 🇺🇸 Dr. Bingjie Wang, Penn State University 🇨🇳🇺🇸 Dr. John R. Weaver, University of Massachusetts Amherst 🇺🇸 Dr. Kate Whitaker, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen 🇺🇸🇩🇰 Image: ESA Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes, European Space Agency - ESA 🇪🇺& NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration 🇺🇸 https://lnkd.in/e4EJKmEB #space #astronomy #blackholes #science #hubblespacetelescope #hubble #galaxy #universe #research #astrophysics #supercomputing #quasar

The awakening of a SMBH. Researchers led by Paula Sánchez Sáez from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have observed for the first time the awakening of a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH). Observing a galaxy known as SDSS1335+0728, located around 300 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, they saw how in 2019 it began to dramatically increase its brightness. Up to now, the increase has not stopped and the galaxy is actually considered to have acquired an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The process by which a SMBH became active, had never before been observed, and follow up observations are being planned to better understand it. The findings have been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (18 June, 2024). https://lnkd.in/dmM46vuU #physics #physicsnews #astrophysics #astronomy #blackholes #smbh #eso #agn

Lightest black hole or heaviest neutron star? MeerKAT uncovers a mysterious object at the boundary between black holes and neutron stars An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, have used the MeerKAT radio telescope to discover an intriguing object of an unknown nature in the globular cluster NGC 1851. The massive object is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest black holes known and is in orbit around a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar. This could be the first discovery of the much-coveted radio pulsar - black hole binary; a stellar pairing that would allow new tests of Einstein’s general relativity. Read More https://lnkd.in/dHzvC8N5 #MeerKAT #radioastronomy #research #blackhole

Three iron rings for a star. Researchers led by József Varga from the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), have detected for the first time a complex structure in which dust piles up in three concentric rings in the inner regions of an environment like the early solar system. The planet-forming disk was observed around the young star HD 144432, located around 500 light-years away. If we compare it to our system, the first ring would lie within Mercury's orbit, the second would be close to Mars's trajectory, and the third one would roughly correspond to Jupiter's orbit. The findings have been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (8 January, 2023). https://lnkd.in/dnKPexMm #physics #physicsnews #astrophysics #astronomy #eso #vlti #hd144432