New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

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The Dark Wolf Nebula

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Highlights of the Dark Wolf Nebula

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The Dark Wolf Nebula in the constellation Scorpius

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Panning across the Dark Wolf Nebula

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For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Found in the constellation Scorpius, near the centre of the Milky Way on the sky, the Dark Wolf Nebula is located around 5300 light-years from Earth. This image takes up an area in the sky equivalent to four full Moons, but is actually part of an even larger nebula called Gum 55. If you look closely, the wolf could even be a werewolf, its hands ready to grab unsuspecting bystanders…

If you thought that darkness equals emptiness, think again. Dark nebulae are cold clouds of cosmic dust, so dense that they obscure the light of stars and other objects behind them. As their name suggests, they do not emit visible light, unlike other nebulae. Dust grains within them absorb visible light and only let through radiation at longer wavelengths, like infrared light. Astronomers study these clouds of frozen dust because they often contain new stars in the making.

Of course, tracing the wolf’s ghost-like presence in the sky is only possible because it contrasts with a bright background. This image shows in spectacular detail how the dark wolf stands out against the glowing star-forming clouds behind it. The colourful clouds are built up mostly of hydrogen gas and glow in reddish tones excited by the intense UV radiation from the newborn stars within them.

Some dark nebulae, like the Coalsack Nebula, can be seen with the naked eye –– and play a key role in how First Nations interpret the sky [1] –– but not the Dark Wolf. This image was created using data from the VLT Survey Telescope, which is owned by the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF) and is hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The telescope is equipped with a specially designed camera to map the southern sky in visible light.

The picture was compiled from images taken at different times, each one with a filter letting in a different colour of light. They were all captured during the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has studied some 500 million objects in our Milky Way. Surveys like this help scientists to better understand the life cycle of stars within our home galaxy, and the obtained data are made publicly available through the ESO science portal. Explore this treasure trove of data yourself: who knows what other eerie shapes you will uncover in the dark?

Source: ESO/News

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Notes

[1] The Mapuche people of south-central Chile refer to the Coalsack Nebula as ‘pozoko’ (water well), and the Incas called it ‘yutu’ (a partridge-like bird).

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More information

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

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Re-analysis of Data from Milky Way Central Supermassive Black Hole Observations

Radio image of Sagittarius A* in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, obtained from this re-analysis. The structure is elongated from east to west. The east side is bright and the west side is dark, which the research team interprets to mean that the east side is moving towards us. Credit: Miyoshi et al.

A research team led by Assistant Professor Makoto Miyoshi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has independently re-analyzed observation data of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy obtained and published by the international joint observation project Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). They found that the structure is slightly elongated in the east-west direction. This research takes a new look at the publicly available EHT data and demonstrates the scientific process in which the certainty of the answer increases as different researchers continue to examine and discuss a theory.

The Milky Way Galaxy, in which we live, contains more than 100 billion sun-like stars. There are countless such large galaxies in the Universe, most of which are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centers with masses millions to billions of times that of the Sun. The Milky Way Galaxy also has a supermassive black hole at its center, called Sagittarius A* (A star). The black hole swallows everything, including light, making it impossible to see the supermassive black hole itself, but analysis of stars circling the black hole at high speed indicates that Sagittarius A* has a mass approximately 4 million times that of the Sun. By closely observing its surroundings, we can obtain clues to the nature of the invisible black hole.

The EHT observed Sagittarius A* in 2017 with a network of eight ground-based radio telescopes using a technique known as radio interferometry to combine the results from the various telescopes. The results of these observations were published in 2022, including an image of a bright ring structure surrounding a central dark region, indicating the presence of a black hole.

In contrast to typical photography, data from observations linking several widely-separated radio telescopes contain many gaps in the completeness, so special algorithms are used to construct an image from the data. In this research, the team applied widely-used traditional methods to EHT data, as opposed to the EHT’s own original analysis method. Miyoshi explains, “Our image is slightly elongated in the east-west direction, and the eastern half is brighter than the western half. We think this appearance means the accretion disk surrounding the black hole is rotating.”

The EHT’s observational data and analysis methods are freely available, and many researchers have validated the results of EHT analysis. This research is also part of these regular verification activities. Radio interferometry connecting telescopes across the globe is a developing technology, and research on data analysis and image processing is ongoing, incorporating knowledge from statistics and other related disciplines. The structures presented in this research differ from the results of the EHT team, but both are plausible structures derived from the data using the respective methods. The EHT plays an important role in black hole research by soliciting independent verification and providing open data for verification. It is hoped that a more reliable picture of Sagittarius A* will emerge from active discussion by researchers based on improved analysis methods and data from follow-up observations carried out since 2018.

Source: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)/News/Science

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Detailed Article(s)

The Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center — EHT Observational Data re-analysed and High-velocity rotating Accretion Disk found?

JASMINE Project

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Release Information

Researcher(s) Involved in this Release
Makoto Miyoshi (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)
Yoshiaki Kato (Japan Meteorological Agency)
Junichiro Makino (Kobe University)

Coordinated Release Organization(s)
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Royal Astronomical Society

Paper(s)

Makoto Miyoshi et al. “An Independent Hybrid Imaging of Sgr A* from the Data in EHT 2017 Observations”, in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae1158

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Related Link(s)

• Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy (May 12, 2022)

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Astronomers Discover New Building Blocks of Complex Organic Matter

Credit: NSF/NSF NRAO/AUI/S. Dagnello

CfA scientists help detect a new molecule in interstellar space as list of identified complex molecules grows

The element carbon is a building block for life, both on Earth and potentially elsewhere in the vast reaches of space. There should be a lot of carbon in space, but surprisingly, it's not always easy to find.

While it can be observed in many places, it doesn’t add up to the volume astronomers would expect to see. The discovery of a new, complex molecule (1-cyanopyrene), challenges expectations about where the building blocks for carbon are found and how they evolve.

Astronomers have long understood that certain carbon-rich stars are soot factories that release copious quantities of small molecular sheets of carbon into the interstellar medium. Scientists thought, however, that these types of carbon-rich molecules could neither survive the harsh conditions of interstellar space nor be re-formed there by combustion-like chemistry because the temperature is far too low.

Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) helped lead this research. A paper describing these results was published today in the journal Science.

“Our detection of 1-cyanopyrene gives us important new information about the chemical origin and fate of carbon -- the single most important element to complex chemistry both on Earth and in space,” said Bryan Changala of the CfA, a co-author of the Science paper.

The 1-cyanopyrene molecule is made up of multiple fused benzene rings. It belongs to a class of compounds known as Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), which were previously believed to form only at high temperatures in regions with lots of energy, like the environments surrounding aging stars. On Earth, PAHs are found in burning fossil fuels, and as char marks on grilled food.

Astronomers study PAHs not just to learn about their particular lifecycle, but to learn more about how they interact with and reveal more about the interstellar medium (ISM) and celestial bodies around them. PAHs are believed to be responsible for the unidentified infrared bands observed in many astronomical objects. These bands arise from the infrared fluorescence of PAHs after they absorb ultraviolet (UV) photons from stars. The intensity of these bands reveal PAHs could account for a significant fraction of carbon in the ISM.

However, the newly observed 1-cyanopyrene molecules were found in Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 (TMC-1), a cold interstellar cloud. Located in the Taurus constellation, TMC-1 has not yet begun forming stars, and the temperature is only about 10 degrees above absolute zero.

“TMC-1 is a natural laboratory for studying these molecules that go on to form the building blocks of stars and planets,” said Gabi Wenzel, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led the lab work and is the first author on the Science paper.

“These are the largest molecules we’ve found in TMC-1 to date. This discovery pushes the boundaries of our understanding of the complexity of molecules that can exist in interstellar space,” said co-author Brett McGuire, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT and an adjunct astronomer at the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Astronomers used the NSF Green Bank Telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, to discover 1-cyanopyrene. Every molecule has a unique rotational spectrum, like a fingerprint, which allows for its identification. However, their large size and lack of a permanent dipole moment, can make some PAHs difficult – or even impossible – to detect. The observations of cyanopyrene can provide indirect evidence for the presence of even larger and more complex molecules in future observations.

“Identifying the unique rotational spectrum of 1-cyanopyrene required the work of an interdisciplinary scientific team,” explains co-author Harshal Gupta, NSF Program Director for the Green Bank Observatory and Research Associate at the CfA. “This discovery is a great illustration of synthetic chemists, spectroscopists, astronomers, and modelers working closely and harmoniously.”

This research combined the expertise of astronomy and chemistry with measurements and analysis conducted in the molecular spectroscopy laboratory of Dr. Michael McCarthy at the CfA.

“The microwave spectrometers developed at the CfA are unique, world-class instruments specifically designed to measure the precise radio fingerprints of complex molecules like 1-cyanopyrene,” said McCarthy. “Predictions from even the most advanced quantum chemical theories are still thousands of times less accurate than what is needed to identify these molecules in space with radio telescopes, so experiments in laboratories like ours are indispensable to these ground-breaking astronomical discoveries."

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)/News Release

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Media Contact:

Megan Watzke
Interim CfA Public Affairs Officer
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

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About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and the Smithsonian designed to ask—and ultimately answer—humanity's greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with research facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

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Dandelion Supernova Revealed in 3-D

An artist’s concept of a supernova remnant called Pa 30—the leftover remains of a supernova explosion that was witnessed from Earth in the year 1181. Unusual filaments of sulfur protrude beyond a dusty shell of ejected material. The remains of the original star that exploded, now a hot inflated star which may cool to become a white dwarf, are seen at the center of the remnant. The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawai‘i has mapped the strange filaments in 3-D and shown that they are flying outward at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

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New observations probe a sphere of filaments around a dead star

Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – For nearly six months during the year 1181, people looked up to the skies to find a new star glittering in the constellation Cassiopeia. Chinese and Japanese astronomers recorded the rare event, an explosion of a star, or supernova. In the centuries since, astronomers have searched for the remains of the blast, but it was not until 2013 that they were finally found. As part of a citizen scientist project, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick—who had sifted through images taken by the now-retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE—found a nebula at the site where the supernova had occurred.

Further observations convinced astronomers that this nebula, called Pa 30, was in fact the leftover ejected material from the 1181 supernova. Later, in 2023, astronomers discovered strange filaments within the supernova remnant, which resemble the wispy tendrils of a dandelion flower.

Now, with the help of the Caltech-built Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai‘i Island, astronomers have, for the first time, mapped the location of those unusual filaments in three dimensions in addition to the speed at which they are streaming outward from the site of the blast.

“A standard image of the supernova remnant would be like a static photo of a fireworks display,” says Caltech professor of physics Christopher Martin, who led the team that built KCWI. “KCWI gives us something more like a ‘movie’ since we can measure the motion of the explosion’s embers as they streak outward from the central explosion.”

Martin is a co-author of a new paper reporting the findings published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The study is led by Tim Cunningham, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics |Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), and the co-lead author is Ilaria Caiazzo, a former Caltech postdoctoral scholar who recently became an assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

3-D Look at Unusual Remains of a Historical Supernova

In 1181, astronomers in China and Japan recorded a new star in the sky, a rare supernova explosion. The remains of that supernova, called SN 1181, are depicted here in this artist’s animation, which flies around the remnant as it appears today in one moment in time. The corpse of the star that detonated, a hot and inflated “zombie” star, is seen within a dusty shell of ejected material. Beyond the dusty shell, bright radial filaments of sulfur extend three light-years out from their point of origin. The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) at the W. M. Keck Observatory has mapped these filaments in 3-D and shown that they are flying outward at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

The 1181 supernova is thought to have occurred when a thermonuclear explosion was triggered on a dense dead star called a white dwarf. Typically, the white dwarf would be completely destroyed in this type of explosion, but in this case some of the star survived, leaving behind a sort of “zombie star.” This type of partial explosion is called a Type Iax supernova. “Because this was a failed explosion, it was fainter than normal supernovae, which has been shown to be consistent with the historical records,” Caiazzo says.

Material ejected in the 1181 explosion makes up the Pa 30 nebula that astronomers observe today. While the scientists know that the peculiar filaments, which glow with light from sulfur, were also generated by the supernova, they do not know how and when they formed.

To probe the three-dimensional structure of the supernova remnant, the astronomers turned to KCWI, an instrument that can capture multiwavelength, or spectral, information for every pixel in an image. This is like breaking apart the light captured in every pixel into a rainbow of colors. The spectral information enabled the team to measure the motions of the filaments poking out from the center of the explosion and ultimately create a 3D map of the structure. The filament material that is flying toward us shifted toward the blue higher-energy portion end of the visible spectrum (blue-shifted), while light from material moving away from us shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (red-shifted).

This is analogous to the Doppler shift one can hear as a blaring firetruck races by. As the vehicle moves toward us, the sound waves from its horn become squeezed into higher frequencies; as the truck moves away from us, the sound waves become elongated to lower frequencies.

Specifically, this study used the “red arm” of the KCWI instrument, which was installed at Keck Observatory last summer. KCWI consists of two halves: One captures light wavelengths at the blue end of the visible spectrum, and the other half covers the red end in addition to infrared light. “The addition of the red arm more than doubled the spectral coverage of KCWI and made these observations possible,” says Caltech graduate student and co-author Nikolaus Prusinski. “This 3D map comprises the most sensitive spatial and spectral measurements of Pa 30 to date and holds the current record for the largest contiguous region surveyed with the red channel.”

The results showed that the filament material in the supernova is flying outward from the site of the explosion at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second.

“We find the material in the filaments is expanding ballistically,” says Cunningham. “This means that the material has not been slowed down nor sped up since the explosion. From the measured velocities, looking back in time, you can pinpoint the explosion to almost exactly the year 1181.”

The 3D information also revealed a large cavity inside the spindly, spherical structure in addition to some evidence that the supernova explosion of 1181 occurred asymmetrically.

As to how the filaments formed after the blast, the scientists are still puzzled. “A reverse shock wave may be condensing surrounding dust into filaments, but we don’t know yet,” says Cunningham. “The morphology of this object is very strange and fascinating.”

Source: W.M. Keck Observatory/Science News

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About KCWI

The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) is designed to provide visible band, integral field spectroscopy with moderate to high spectral resolution formats and excellent sky-subtraction. The astronomical seeing and large aperture of the telescope enables studies of the connection between galaxies and the gas in their dark matter halos, stellar relics, star clusters, and lensed galaxies. KCWI covers the blue side of the visible spectrum; the instrument also features the Keck Cosmic Reionization Mapper (KCRM), extending KCWI’s coverage to the red side of the visible spectrum. The combination of KCWI-blue and KCRM provides simultaneous high-efficiency spectral coverage across the entire visible spectrum. Support for KCWI was provided by the National Science Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, and Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation. Support for KCRM was provided by the National Science Foundation and Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation.

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About W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY

The W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes are among the most scientifically productive on Earth. The two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes atop Maunakea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers, and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.

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Gemini North Captures Galactic Archipelago Entangled In a Web Of Dark Matter

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NGC 1270: A Galactic Archipelago

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Cosmoview Episode 88: Gemini North Captures Galactic Archipelago Entangled In a Web Of Dark Matter


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Pan on NGC 1270


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Zooming into NGC 1270


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Cosmoview Episodio 88: Un archipiélago galáctico en un mar de materia oscura

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One century after astronomers proved the existence of galaxies beyond the Milky Way, enormous galaxy clusters are offering clues to today’s cosmic questions

10 years ago Edwin Hubble discovered decisive evidence that other galaxies existed far beyond the Milky Way. This image, captured by the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, features a portion of the enormous Perseus Cluster, showcasing its ‘island Universes’ in awe-inspiring detail. Observations of these objects continue to shed light not only on their individual characteristics, but also on cosmic mysteries such as dark matter.

Among the many views of the Universe that modern telescopes offer, some of the most breathtaking are images like this. Dotted with countless galaxies — each one of incomprehensible size — they make apparent the tremendous scale and richness of the cosmos. Taking center stage here, beguiling in its seeming simplicity, the elliptical galaxy NGC 1270 radiates an ethereal glow into the surrounding darkness. And although it may seem like an island adrift in the deep ocean of space, this object is part of something much larger than itself.

NGC 1270 is just one member of the Perseus Cluster, a group of thousands of galaxies that lies around 240 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. This image, taken with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory — supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab — captures a dazzling collection of galaxies in the central region of this enormous cluster.

Looking at such a diverse array, shown here in spectacular clarity, it’s astonishing to think that when NGC 1270 was first discovered in 1863 it was not widely accepted that other galaxies even existed. Many of the objects that are now known to be galaxies were initially described as nebulae, owing to their cloudy, amorphous appearance. The idea that they are entities of a similar size to our own Milky Way, or ‘island Universes’ as Immanuel Kant called them, was speculated on by several astronomers throughout history, but was not proven. Instead, many thought they were smaller objects on the outskirts of the Milky Way, which many believed to comprise most or all of the Universe.

The nature of these mysterious objects and the size of the Universe were the subjects of astronomy’s famous Great Debate, held in 1920 between astronomers Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley. The debate remained unsettled until 1924 when Edwin Hubble, using the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, observed stars within some of the nebulae to calculate how far they were from Earth. The results were decisive; they were far beyond the Milky Way. Astronomers’ notion of the cosmos underwent a dramatic shift, now populated with innumerable strange, far-off galaxies as large and complex as our own.

As imaging techniques have improved, piercing ever more deeply into space, astronomers have been able to look closer and closer at these ‘island Universes’ to deduce what they might be like. For instance, researchers have observed powerful electromagnetic energy emanating from the heart of NGC 1270, suggesting that it harbors a frantically feeding supermassive black hole. This characteristic is seen in around 10% of galaxies and is detectable via the presence of an accretion disk — an intense vortex of matter swirling around and gradually being devoured by the central black hole.

It’s not only the individual galaxies that astronomers are interested in; hints at many ongoing mysteries lie in their relationship to and interactions with one another. For example, the fact that huge groups like the Perseus Cluster exist at all points to the presence of the enigmatic substance we call dark matter [1]. If there were no such invisible, gravitationally interactive material, then astronomers believe galaxies would be spread more or less evenly across space rather than collecting into densely populated clusters. Current theories suggest that an invisible web of dark matter draws galaxies together at the intersections between its colossal tendrils, where its gravitational pull is strongest.

Although dark matter is invoked to explain observed cosmic structures, the nature of the substance itself remains elusive. As we look at images like this one, and consider the strides made in our understanding over the past century, we can sense a tantalizing hint of just how much more might be discovered in the decades to come. Perhaps hidden in images like this are clues to the next big breakthrough. How much more will we know about our Universe in another century?

Source: NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab)/News

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Notes

[1] The discovery of dark matter in galaxies is in-part attributed to American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who used the rotation of galaxies to infer the presence of an invisible, yet gravitationally interactive, material holding them together. She is also the name inspiration for NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in Chile, which will begin operations in 2025.

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More information

NSF NOIRLab (U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the U.S. center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory (operated in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O’odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.

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Links

• Photos of Gemini North
• Videos of Gemini North
• Check out other NOIRLab Photo Releases

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Contacts:

Josie Fenske
Jr. Public Information Officer
NSF NOIRLab
Email: josie.fenske@noirlab.edu

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Searching Five Million Stars for Disks, Debris, and Dyson Spheres

This image combines data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope to show the center of the Milky Way at infrared wavelengths. Credit: Hubble: NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Spitzer: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)

Main-sequence stars with brighter than expected mid-infrared emission can signal the presence of a debris disk, rubble from planetary collisions, or even a theorized sign of a technologically advanced civilization. New research demonstrates a data-driven method to identify mid-infrared excesses in main-sequence stars.

This image combines observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to show the dusty debris disk surrounding the star Fomalhaut.  Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope A. Fujii/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0

An Excess of Emission

Young stars swaddled in gas and dust are known to shine extra brightly in the mid-infrared, but as stars age, this mid-infrared exuberance is expected to fade. When it doesn’t, that signals something interesting. Extreme debris disks resulting from collisions between planets or planetesimals provide one explanation for excess infrared light from mature stars; as rubble and dust billow from the collision, the dust captures and reprocesses the star’s light, re-emitting it in the mid-infrared and causing a potentially detectable excess. Only a handful of extreme debris disk candidates have been identified.

Mid-infrared excesses are hypothesized to signal something even wilder: the presence of a Dyson sphere — a hypothetical artificial structure created by an advanced civilization to harness the power of their home star. Similar to dust and rubble, the components of a Dyson sphere would collect starlight and re-emit it at infrared wavelengths, potentially producing a mid-infrared bump.

Regardless of the cause, excess mid-infrared emission from mature Sun-like stars is something to investigate. But how do we find stars with this feature?

Difference between observed and predicted magnitude in the WISE W1 and W2 bands (3.4 and 4.6 microns, respectively)
Adapted from Contardo & Hogg 2024

Taking Cues from Data

Gabriella Contardo (International School for Advanced Studies, Italy) and David Hogg (New York University; Flatiron Institute; Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) began their search for mid-infrared excesses with an expansive set of observations from the Gaia spacecraft, the Two Micron All Sky Survey, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). After trimming these data sets down to include only main-sequence Sun-like stars, and to exclude objects that might be contaminated by close neighbors or are too dusty, they reduced the number of stars in their sample from 18,751,187 to 4,898,812.

To identify mid-infrared excesses in this sample, the team needed an estimate of what the mid-infrared fluxes of these stars should be. Rather than using models, which can be computationally intensive and require making assumptions about the objects, Contardo and Hogg let the data lead the way.

Their data-driven method involves splitting the five million stars into eight sub-samples, each of which is used to train a separate random forest algorithm. Each algorithm “learns” what the mid-infrared emission “should” be from the stars in its sample, then predicts the mid-infrared emission of the stars in the other seven sub-samples. When a star’s actual mid-infrared emission is brighter than predicted, it gets flagged.

Locations of the 53 stars in the final mid-infrared excess sample
Credit: Contardo & Hogg 202

To Be Continued

This analysis yielded a preliminary sample of 127 objects with mid-infrared excess. Ultimately, after applying additional cuts to remove crowded objects, duplicate sources, and other complications, Contardo and Hogg landed on a sample of 53 objects with interesting infrared behavior. These objects’ mid-infrared emission ranged from 0.5% to 10% higher than expected, spanning the values predicted for extreme debris disks and rubble left over from planetary collisions. In fact, one of the 53 objects has already been highlighted by previous work as an extreme debris disk candidate.

What happens now? To identify the stars that are the most promising hosts of extreme debris disks, Contardo and Hogg listed ways to pin down the ages of the stars in their sample, which may rule out stars whose mid-infrared excess is due to their youth. They also proposed to compare the mid-infrared behavior of their stellar sample to Dyson sphere models, exploring whether the observed stellar behavior matches the predictions for these hypothetical structures.

By Kerry Hensley

Citation

“A Data-Driven Search for Mid-infrared Excesses Among Five Million Main-Sequence FGK Stars,” Gabriella Contardo and David W. Hogg 2024 AJ 168 157. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ad6b90

Source: American Astronomical Society/AAS-Nova

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Massive stars born from violent cosmic collapse: New process of star formation challenges turbulent core model

Overview of an example high-mass starless clump (HMSC) G022.5309-0.1927
Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2024). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad7b08

Controlled chaos is a key part of forming massive stars. An international team of astronomers has observed evidence that massive stars can be born from rapidly collapsing clouds of gas and dust, challenging long-held assumptions about star formation.

The heavy elements that heavy stars create, like iron or calcium, are scattered across the universe when they collapse as supernovas. These elements become part of new stars, new planets—and everything in between.

The research team analyzed 44 high-mass starless clumps (HMSCs) using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The scientists discovered that nearly all of these stellar nurseries (43 out of 44) are in a "sub-virial" state, meaning they lack sufficient internal energy to resist gravitational collapse.

This research, led by Prof. Ke Wang of Peking University's Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, contradicts the prevailing turbulent core model, which assumed these regions were in equilibrium before star formation began. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

As Wang explains, "Instead, the data we saw suggests a more dynamic process involving rapid collapse. HMSCs are undergoing an almost free-fall collapse, explaining why genuine massive prestellar cores are so rarely observed. To prevent collapse, these regions would require unusually strong magnetic fields. These fields are the invisible scaffolding of the universe, holding things up in ways astronomers are just beginning to understand."

This research used the Radio Ammonia Mid-Plane Survey (RAMPS) survey on the GBT. This survey focuses on 24 square degrees of the Galactic Plane, and provides valuable data for understanding the formation of high-mass stars, the structure and composition of molecular clouds, and the dynamics and evolution of our galaxy.

This discovery provides crucial insight into the birth of massive stars, which are responsible for creating the heavy elements essential for life. "The universe is a giant puzzle, and surprising findings like this are a sweet part of life as an astronomer," adds Fengwei Xu, co-author of the paper.

Existing theoretical models will need to adapt to account for this more violent and rapid star formation process. The team plans to use high-resolution telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to further confirm their findings and probe the earliest moments of massive star formation, and future magnetic field measurements within HMSCs.

Source: Phys.org/Space News

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More information: Ke Wang et al, Massive Star Formation Starts in Subvirial Dense Clumps Unless Resisted by Strong Magnetic Fields, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2024). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad7b08

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Letters

Provided by National Radio Astronomy Observatory

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Explore further

• Observations of high-mass star seeds defy models

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On the Run: Hypervelocity Stars and Their Links to Type Ia Supernovae

Artist’s rendition of two white dwarf stars about to collide and explode in a Type Ia supernova.
Still image from an animation by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

As the Gaia spacecraft has mapped more and more of the Milky Way, astronomers have uncovered some of the fastest-moving stars in the galaxy. Can simulations link these stars to the elusive origins of Type Ia supernovae?

Type Ia Supernova Origins

Occurring in binary star systems with at least one white dwarf, Type Ia supernovae are key cosmological distance indicators and have allowed astronomers to study the expansion of the universe. Despite their importance, the details behind these explosions and the characteristics of their progenitor systems remain unclear.

One proposed mechanism to launch a Type Ia supernova is the double-detonation scenario, in which the white dwarf accretes helium from a helium-rich donor star. Forming a thin shell around the carbon-oxygen core, the siphoned helium eventually detonates, sending shock waves through the core, causing it to also detonate. In the wake of the powerful explosion, the donor star launches across the Milky Way, forever changed.

Recent Gaia discoveries of a runaway helium-burning star and hypervelocity stars — stars that zoom through the galaxy much faster than the general stellar population — suggest that the double-detonation scenario may be responsible for a number of Type Ia supernovae. Can double-detonation simulations predict the observed properties of these fast-moving stars, further uncovering Type Ia supernova origins?

Simulation snapshots showing fraction of donor material (left) and total density (right) for a helium white dwarf donor model. The bottom panel shows that, though much of the donor’s material has expanded, a large fraction is still bound to the donor star as indicated by the gray lines in the left panel. The impacts of shock waves can be seen as concentric shells in the density distribution on the right. Credit: Wong et al. 2024

Supernova Ejecta Effects

As a helium-rich donor star is bombarded with material and energy from its exploding white dwarf companion, interactions with the supernova ejecta can leave lasting impacts on the donor star’s trajectory through the galaxy as well as the star’s properties and evolution. Motivated by this interaction and the Gaia observations of hypervelocity stars, Tin Long Sunny Wong (University of California, Santa Barbara) and collaborators performed hydrodynamical simulations that track, with novel clarity, the lasting imprints supernova ejecta leave on their companions. The authors’ analysis shows that as the supernova ejecta crashes into the donor star, some of the donor star’s material is swept up and pulled in the direction of the supernova’s propagation. The supernova shock wave passes through the donor star, both compressing and pushing the star away from the explosion center. As the shock front moves on, the donor star attempts to return to equilibrium, contracting and expanding, sending smaller shock waves into its surroundings.

For each progenitor stellar type simulated, the authors find that the donor stars become puffed up with lower densities and larger radii. The donors also lose some of their original mass but acquire a small portion of supernova ejecta material — consistent with the observed metal-polluted atmospheres and larger radii of hypervelocity stars.

Postexplosion evolution for each simulated donor star type (labeled in figure legend) in luminosity-temperature space (Hertzsprung-Russell diagram). Four observed stars of interest are plotted, showing intriguing agreement between the well-studied hypervelocity star D6-2 and the expected evolution for a helium white dwarf donor companion. Credit:Wong et al. 2024

Postexplosion Evolution

Particularly important to the identification of donor stars in the field is how these stars evolve over longer timescales and how we may observe them today. The authors performed further simulations to track the temperature and luminosity changes for each simulated donor star from ~10 years to 100 million years after the supernova event. Intriguingly, some of the observed hypervelocity stars seem to fall near the predicted evolutionary tracks, suggesting that these stars could have been ejected by Type Ia supernovae. This study provides important evidence for the possible double-detonation scenario of Type Ia supernovae. As simulations continue to improve, the ability to identify the progenitor systems of these energetic events becomes more promising.

By Lexi Gault

Citation

“Shocking and Mass Loss of Compact Donor Stars in Type Ia Supernovae,” Tin Long Sunny Wong et al 2024 ApJ 973 65. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad6a11

Source: American Astronomical Society/AAS-Nova

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Celestial cannonball Celestial cannonball

IC 3225

A spiral galaxy. Its disc glows visibly from the centre, and has faint dust threaded through it. A spiral arm curves around the left edge of the disc and is noticeably more dense with bright blue spots, where there are hot and new stars, than the rest. Opposite, the disc stretches out into a short tail where it covers a distant background galaxy. Around it, other distant galaxies and some nearby stars are visible. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun

The spiral galaxy appearing in this week’s Hubble Picture of the Week is named IC 3225. It looks remarkably as if it’s been launched from a cannon, speeding through space like a comet with a tail of gas streaming from its disc behind it. The scenes that galaxies appear in from Earth’s point of view are fascinating; many seem to hang calmly in the emptiness of space as if hung from a string, while others star in much more dynamic situations!

Appearances can be deceiving with objects so far from Earth — IC 3225 itself is about 100 million light-years away — but the galaxy’s location suggests some causes for this active scene, because IC 3225 is one of over 1300 members of the Virgo galaxy cluster. The density of galaxies in the Virgo cluster creates a rich field of hot gas between them, the so-called ‘intracluster medium’, while the cluster’s extreme mass has its galaxies careening around its centre in some very fast orbits. Ramming through the thick intracluster medium, especially close to the cluster’s centre, places an enormous ‘ram pressure’ on the moving galaxies that strips gas out of them as they go.

IC 3225 is not so close to the cluster core right now, but astronomers have deduced that it has undergone this ram pressure stripping in the past. The galaxy looks as though it’s been impacted by this: it is compressed on one side and there has been noticeably more star formation on this leading edge, while the opposite end is stretched out of shape. Being in such a crowded field, a close call with another galaxy could also have tugged on IC 3225 and created this shape. The sight of this distorted galaxy is a reminder of the incredible forces at work on astronomical scales, which can move and reshape even entire galaxies!

Links

• Pan of IC 3225

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Astronomers detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins

This image, taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, shows an ancient quasar (circled in red) with fewer than expected neighboring galaxies (bright blobs), challenging physicists’ understanding of how the first quasars and supermassive black holes formed. Credit: Christina Eilers/EIGER team

The quasars appear to have few cosmic neighbors, raising questions about how they first emerged more than 13 billion years ago

A quasar is the extremely bright core of a galaxy that hosts an active supermassive black hole at its center. As the black hole draws in surrounding gas and dust, it blasts out an enormous amount of energy, making quasars some of the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars have been observed as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and it’s been a mystery as to how these objects could have grown so bright and massive in such a short amount of cosmic time..

Scientists have proposed that the earliest quasars sprang from overly dense regions of primordial matter, which would also have produced many smaller galaxies in the quasars’ environment. But in a new MIT-led study, astronomers observed some ancient quasars that appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe.

The astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer back in time, more than 13 billion years, to study the cosmic surroundings of five known ancient quasars. They found a surprising variety in their neighborhoods, or “quasar fields.” While some quasars reside in very crowded fields with more than 50 neighboring galaxies, as all models predict, the remaining quasars appear to drift in voids, with only a few stray galaxies in their vicinity.

These lonely quasars are challenging physicists’ understanding of how such luminous objects could have formed so early on in the universe, without a significant source of surrounding matter to fuel their black hole growth.

“Contrary to previous belief, we find on average, these quasars are not necessarily in those highest-density regions of the early universe. Some of them seem to be sitting in the middle of nowhere,” says Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT. “It’s difficult to explain how these quasars could have grown so big if they appear to have nothing to feed from.”

There is a possibility that these quasars may not be as solitary as they appear, but are instead surrounded by galaxies that are heavily shrouded in dust and therefore hidden from view. Eilers and her colleagues hope to tune their observations to try and see through any such cosmic dust, in order to understand how quasars grew so big, so fast, in the early universe.

Eilers and her colleagues report their findings in a paper appearing today in the Astrophysical Journal. The MIT co-authors include postdocs Rohan Naidu and Minghao Yue; Robert Simcoe, the Francis Friedman Professor of Physics and director of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research; and collaborators from institutions including Leiden University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, ETH Zurich, and elsewhere.

Galactic neighbors

The five newly observed quasars are among the oldest quasars observed to date. More than 13 billion years old, the objects are thought to have formed between 600 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. The supermassive black holes powering the quasars are a billion times more massive than the sun, and more than a trillion times brighter. Due to their extreme luminosity, the light from each quasar is able to travel over the age of the universe, far enough to reach JWST’s highly sensitive detectors today.

“It’s just phenomenal that we now have a telescope that can capture light from 13 billion years ago in so much detail,” Eilers says. “For the first time, JWST enabled us to look at the environment of these quasars, where they grew up, and what their neighborhood was like.”

The team analyzed images of the five ancient quasars taken by JWST between August 2022 and June 2023. The observations of each quasar comprised multiple “mosaic” images, or partial views of the quasar’s field, which the team effectively stitched together to produce a complete picture of each quasar’s surrounding neighborhood.

The telescope also took measurements of light in multiple wavelengths across each quasar’s field, which the team then processed to determine whether a given object in the field was light from a neighboring galaxy, and how far a galaxy is from the much more luminous central quasar.

“We found that the only difference between these five quasars is that their environments look so different,” Eilers says. “For instance, one quasar has almost 50 galaxies around it, while another has just two. And both quasars are within the same size, volume, brightness, and time of the universe. That was really surprising to see.”

Growth spurts

The disparity in quasar fields introduces a kink in the standard picture of black hole growth and galaxy formation. According to physicists’ best understanding of how the first objects in the universe emerged, a cosmic web of dark matter should have set the course. Dark matter is an as-yet unknown form of matter that has no other interactions with its surroundings other than through gravity.

Shortly after the Big Bang, the early universe is thought to have formed filaments of dark matter that acted as a sort of gravitational road, attracting gas and dust along its tendrils. In overly dense regions of this web, matter would have accumulated to form more massive objects. And the brightest, most massive early objects, such as quasars, would have formed in the web’s highest-density regions, which would have also churned out many more, smaller galaxies.

“The cosmic web of dark matter is a solid prediction of our cosmological model of the Universe, and it can be described in detail using numerical simulations,” says co-author Elia Pizzati, a graduate student at Leiden University. “By comparing our observations to these simulations, we can determine where in the cosmic web quasars are located.”

Scientists estimate that quasars would have had to grow continuously with very high accretion rates in order to reach the extreme mass and luminosities at the times that astronomers have observed them, fewer than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

“The main question we’re trying to answer is, how do these billion-solar-mass black holes form at a time when the universe is still really, really young? It’s still in its infancy,” Eilers says.

The team’s findings may raise more questions than answers. The “lonely” quasars appear to live in relatively empty regions of space. If physicists’ cosmological models are correct, these barren regions signify very little dark matter, or starting material for brewing up stars and galaxies. How, then, did extremely bright and massive quasars come to be?

“Our results show that there’s still a significant piece of the puzzle missing of how these supermassive black holes grow,” Eilers says. “If there’s not enough material around for some quasars to be able to grow continuously, that means there must be some other way that they can grow, that we have yet to figure out.”

This research was supported, in part, by the European Research Council.

By Jennifer Chu | MIT News

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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Zoom into the first page of Euclid’s great cosmic atlas

This mosaic made by ESA’s Euclid space telescope contains 260 observations collected between 25 March and 8 April 2024. This is 1% of the comprehensive survey that Euclid will capture during six years. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon as seen from Earth. The mosaic is 208 gigapixel. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

This graphic provides an overview of the mosaic and zoomed-in images released by ESA’s Euclid mission on 15 October 2024. On the top left, an all-sky map (41 000 square degrees) is visible with the location of Euclid’s mosaic on the Southern Sky highlighted in yellow. The mosaic contains 260 observations made between 25 March and 8 April 2024. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon as seen from Earth. On the top right, Euclid’s field-of-view in one observation is compared to the area of the full Moon. The mosaic shows the locations of the various zoomed-in images. Above the separate images, the zoom factor is given (from 3 to 600 times enlarged compared to the original mosaic). © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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his image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in twelve times compared to the large mosaic. In the middle left, spiral galaxy NGC 2188 is visible edge-on at a distance of 25 million light-years. In the top right corner, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is now clearly noticeable, 678 million light-years away from us. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 36 times compared to the large mosaic. In this image, the core of galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us. The image shows many different galaxies of various shapes and sizes, from massive elliptical to modest spiral galaxies, down to tiny and dim dwarf galaxies. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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Euclid reveals the first deep view into the cosmos, spanning an area of 500 full moons in the sky.

On October 15, 2024, the ESA Euclid space mission will unveil the first piece of its massive map of the universe, showing millions of stars and galaxies. The captured strip across the sky demonstrates the stunning data quality at all levels, from panoramic views of the universe to the details of structures inside individual galaxies. The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) is also playing a key role in Euclid and is, as well everyone involved in science and technology, delighted with the results.

The first part of the final map, which is a very large mosaic of 208 gigapixels, is revealed today at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, by ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher and Director of Science Carole Mundell.

The mosaic contains 260 observations made between 25 March and 8 April 2024. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky in pristine detail, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon.

“Euclid has turned its keen eye to the sky and is working through its observation programme. Scientists and engineers are happy to be able to reap the rewards of 15 years of preparation,” says Frank Grupp. He is a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching and Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich and the German project manager of Euclid.

This mosaic accounts for 1% of the wide survey that Euclid will capture over six years. During this survey, the telescope observes the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. Doing this will create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made.

This first piece of the map already contains some 14 million galaxies that could be used to study the hidden influence of dark matter and dark energy on the Universe. It also contains tens of millions of stars in our own Milky Way.

“This stunning image is the first piece of a map that will reveal more than one third of the sky in six years. This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the Universe,” says Valeria Pettorino, Euclid Project Scientist at ESA.

The spacecraft’s sensitive cameras captured an incredible number of objects in great detail. Zooming very deep into the mosaic, we can still clearly see the intricate structure of a spiral galaxy.

A special feature visible in the mosaic is dim clouds between the stars in our galaxy; they appear in light blue against the black background of space. They are a mix of gas and dust, also called ‘galactic cirrus’ because they look like cirrus clouds. Euclid can see these clouds with its super sensitive visible light camera because they reflect optical light from the Milky Way. The clouds also shine in far-infrared light, as seen by ESA’s Planck mission.

The mosaic released today is a teaser for what’s to come from the Euclid mission. Since the mission started its routine science observations in February, 12% of the survey has been completed. The resulting images already deliver a glimpse of the challenge for the data collection and processing infrastructure. Never before has an astronomical space mission delivered so much data in such a short time – around 100 GB of images and spectra are sent to Earth every day. A central concern of the project is the daily processing of this data.

For this purpose, the Euclid consortium has set up a European network of nine data centres, including the German Science Data Center (SDC-DE), including 7,000 processors, which will handle 10% of the data. A team of six scientists and IT specialists develops algorithms and maintains the hardware.

“The constantly changing software and hardware presents our team with major challenges to assure the timely processing,” says Maximilian Fabricius (LMU and MPE), head of the SDC-DE. “However, we are proud of how well everything is now coming together and that we are now on track for processing for the first public data release.”

The release of 53 square degrees of the survey, including a preview of the Euclid Deep Field areas, is planned for March 2025. The mission’s first year of cosmology data will be released to the community in 2026.

The mosaic released by ESA Euclid space telescope accounts for 1% of the wide survey that Euclid will capture over six years. The location and actual size of the mosaic on the Southern Sky is shown in yellow. This all-sky view is an overlay of Gaia’s star map from its second data release in 2018 and Planck’s dust map from 2014. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA and the Planck Collaboration CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

About Euclid

Euclid was launched in July 2023 and started its routine science observations on 14 February 2024. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpses of the quality of Euclid’s images.

Euclid is a European mission built and operated by the ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan – is responsible for providing the scientific instruments, such as the VIS and NISP cameras, and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as the prime contractor for constructing the satellite and its service module. Airbus Defence and Space was chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.

From Germany, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, the University of Bonn, the Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Bielefeld, and the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Bonn are participating in the Euclid project.

The German Space Agency at DLR coordinates the German ESA contributions and provides funding of 60 million euros from the National Space Programme for the participating German research institutes.

With around 21%, Germany is the most significant contributor to the ESA science programme.

This news item is based on the ESA press release, which is published at the same time.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/News

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Contacts:

Dr. Markus Nielbock
National coordinator for communication of the German research institutes of the Euclid Consortium
tel:+49 6221 528-134
pr@mpia.de Euclid Consortium
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Prof. Dr. Ralf Bender
Director
tel:+49 89 30000-3702
bender@mpe.mpg.de
Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany

Prof. Dr. Hans-Walter Rix
Director
tel:+49 6221 528-210
rix@mpia.de
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Dr. Frank Grupp
tel:+49 89 30000-3956
fgrupp@mpe.mpg.de
Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany

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Links

• ESA Press Release
• Blog article of the Euclid consortium
• International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2024)
• Euclid Consortium
• Euclid @ ESA

Download: Download images here

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