Swirling spiral in Hydra

NGC 3285B

A spiral galaxy with a disc made up of several swirling arms. Patchy blue clouds of gas are speckled over the disc, where stars are forming and lighting up the gas around them. The core of the galaxy is large and shines brightly gold, while the spiral arms are a paler and faint reddish colour. Neighbouring galaxies - from small, elongated spots to larger swirling spirals - can be seen across the black background. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)

The swirling spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 3285B, which resides 137 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake). Hydra has the largest area of the 88 constellations that cover the entire sky in a celestial patchwork. It’s also the longest constellation, stretching 100 degrees across the sky. It would take nearly 200 full Moons, placed side by side, to reach from one side of the constellation to the other.

NGC 3285B is a member of the Hydra I cluster, one of the largest galaxy clusters in the nearby Universe. Galaxy clusters are collections of hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound to one another by gravity. The Hydra I cluster is anchored by two giant elliptical galaxies at its centre. Each of these galaxies is about 150,000 light-years across, making them about 50% larger than our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

NGC 3285B sits on the outskirts of its home cluster, far from the massive galaxies at the centre. This galaxy drew Hubble’s attention because it hosted a Type Ia supernova in 2023. Type Ia supernovae happen when a type of condensed stellar core called a white dwarf detonates, igniting a sudden burst of nuclear fusion that briefly shines about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun. The supernova, named SN 2023xqm, is visible here as a blue-ish dot on the left edge of the galaxy’s disc.

Hubble observed NGC 3285B as part of an observing programme that targeted 100 Type Ia supernovae. By viewing each of these supernovae in ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared light, researchers aim to disentangle the effects of distance and dust, both of which can make a supernova appear redder than it actually is. This programme will help refine cosmic distance measurements that rely on observations of Type Ia supernovae.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Astronomers witness the in situ spheroid formation in distant submillimetre-bright galaxies

Figure 1: Schematic diagram shows how spheroid formation occurs in distant submillimetre-bright galaxies, and how this process connects to the evolution of giant elliptical galaxies in today's Universe. On the far left, we have RGB images from JWST (using F444W for red, F227W for green, and F150W for blue) showcasing examples from our sample of galaxies. The cyan dashed ellipse marks the concentrated region of submm emission, with zoomed-in views highlighting the ALMA submm images. Also shown is a classification of the galaxies' intrinsic shapes. The average shape parameters for our full sample (green ellipse), a subsample of submm-compact galaxies (orange ellipse), and a subsample of submm-extended galaxies (blue ellipse) are compared to local early-type galaxies (red ellipse) and late-type galaxies (represented by purple and cyan spiral shapes). (Credit: Qing-Hua Tan)

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An international team of researchers including The University of Tokyo Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI) has found evidence showing that old elliptical galaxies in the universe can form from intense star formation within early galaxy cores. This discovery that will deepen our understanding of how galaxies evolved from the early Universe, reports a new study in Nature.

Galaxies in today’s Universe are diverse in morphologies and can be roughly divided into two categories: younger, disk-like spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, that are still forming new stars; and older, elliptical galaxies, which are dominated by a central bulge, no longer forming stars and mostly lacking gas. These spheroidal galaxies contain very old stars, yet how they formed has remained a mystery—until now.

The discovery of the birth sites of giant, elliptical galaxies – announced in a paper published today in the Nature – come from analyzing data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) on over 100 Submillimeter Bright Galaxies (SMGs) with redshifts dating to the “Cosmic noon” era, when the universe was between around 1.6 and 5.9 billion years old and many galaxies were actively forming stars. This study provides the first solid observational evidence that spheroids can form directly through intense star formation within the cores of highly luminous starburst galaxies in the early Universe, based on a new perspective from the submillimeter band. This breakthrough will significantly impact models of galaxy evolution and deepen our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve across the Universe.

In this study, researchers led by Chinese Academy of Sciences Purple Mountain Observatory Associate Researcher Qinghua Tan, and including Kavli IPMU Professor John Silverman, Project Researcher Boris Kalita, and graduate student Zhaoxuan Liu, used statistical analysis of the surface brightness distribution of dust emission in the submillimeter band, combined with a novel analysis technique. They found that the submillimeter emission in most of sample galaxies are very compact, with surface brightness profiles deviating significantly from those of exponential disks. This suggests that the submillimeter emission typically comes from structures that are already spheroid-like. Further evidence for this spheroidal shape comes from a detailed analysis of galaxies’ 3D geometry. Modeling based on the skewed-high axis-ratio distribution shows that the ratio of the shortest to the longest of their three axes is, on average, half and increases with spatial compactness. This indicates that most of these highly star-forming galaxies are intrinsically spherical rather than disk-shaped. Supported by numerical simulations, this discovery has shown us that the main mechanism behind the formation of these tri-dimensional galaxies (spheroids) is the simultaneous action of cold gas accretion and galaxy interactions. This process is thought to have been quite common in the early Universe, during the period when most spheroids were forming. It could redefine how we understand galaxy formation.

This research was made possible thanks to the A3COSMOS and A3GOODSS archival projects, which enabled researchers to gather a large number of galaxies observed with a high enough signal-to-noise ratio for detailed analysis. Future exploration of the wealth of ALMA observations accumulated over the years, along with new submillimeter and millimeter observations with higher resolution and sensitivity, will allow us to systematically study the cold gas in galaxies. This will offer unprecedented insight into the distribution and kinematics of the raw materials fueling star formation. With the powerful capabilities of Euclid, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and the China Space Station Telescope (CSST) to map the stellar components of galaxies, we will gain a more complete picture of early galaxy formation. Together, these insights will deepen our understanding of how the Universe as a whole has evolved over time.

Source: Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)

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Paper details

Journal: Nature
Paper title: In-Situ Spheroid Formation in Distant Submillimeter-Bright Galaxies

Authors: Qing-Hua Tan (1,2), Emanuele Daddi (2), Benjamin Magnelli (2), Camila A. Correa (2), Frédéric Bournaud (2), Sylvia Adscheid (3), Shao-Bo Zhang (1), David Elbaz (2), Carlos Gómez-Guijarro (2), Boris S. Kalita (4,5,6), Daizhong Liu (1), Zhaoxuan Liu (4,5,7), Jérôme Pety (8,9), Annagrazia Puglisi (10,11), Eva Schinnerer (12), John D. Silverman (4,5,7,13), Francesco Valentino (14,15)

Author affiliations:

1. Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 10 Yuanhua Road, Nanjing 210023, People's Republic of China

2. Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, AIM, Gif-sur-Yvette 91191, France
3. Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
4. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, 277-8583, Japan
5. Center for Data-Driven Discovery, Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
6. Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People's Republic of China
7. Department of Astronomy, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
8. Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, 300 Rue de la Piscine, 38406 Saint-Martin d’Hères, France
9. LERMA, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research University, CNRS, Sorbonne Universités, 75014 Paris, France
10. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Highfield SO17 1BJ, UK
11. Center for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
12. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany

13. Center for Astrophysical Sciences, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

14. European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-85748 Garching bei Munchen, Germany
15. Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Denmark

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08201-6 (Published December 4, 2024)
Paper abstract (Nature)
Pre-print (arXiv.org)

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Research contact:

John Silverman
Professor
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe
E-mail: john.silverman@ipmu.jp

Media contact:

Motoko Kakubayashi
Press officer
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe
The University of Tokyo
Tel: 04-7136-5980
E-mail：press@ipmu.jp

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Astronomers discover two galaxies aligned in a way where their gravity acts as a compound lens

Summary of evidence showing the unique source and double lens nature of J1721+8842.
Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2411.04177

An international team of astronomers has discovered an instance of two galaxies aligned in a way where their gravity acts as a compound lens. The group has written a paper describing the findings and posted it on the arXiv preprint server.

Prior research has led to many findings of galaxies, or clusters of them, bending light in ways that were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. Astronomers have noted that some of them work as imperfect lenses, distorting the light behind them in interesting ways.

Some researchers have also noted that elliptical galaxies can serve as a lens, serving to brighten the light behind them. In this new effort, the research team has found, for the first time, two galaxies that align in a way that allows their gravity to work as a compound lens.

A compound lens, as its name suggests, is made up of two lenses. Those made artificially are cemented together and work to correct each other's dispersion. In the astronomical case, a compound lens can be made by the dual effects of two galaxies lined up next to one another just right.

The researchers note that when the system, J1721+8842, was first discovered, it was believed that there was just one elliptical galaxy bending the light from a quasar behind it. In analyzing data over a two-year period, the researchers of this new effort found variations in the quasar imagery. They also found small bits of light that, at first glance, appeared to be duplicates from a single source.

A closer look revealed that they matched the light from the main quartet of lights—a finding that showed that all six bits of light were from the same source. Prior research had suggested such an image could be the result of a natural compound lens.

When adding data from the James Webb Space Telescope, the team found that a reddish ring that was mixed with the other lights and was thought to be an Einstein ring was, in reality, a second lensing galaxy. The researchers next built a computer model and used it to confirm that the observation they had made was indeed that of a compound lens.

The research team expects the finding will allow other researchers to more precisely calculate the Hubble constant, perhaps leading to a resolution of conflict over its actual value.

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Source: Phys.org/News

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More information: F. Dux et al, J1721+8842: The first Einstein zig-zag lens, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2411.04177

Journal information: arXiv

© 2024 Science X Network

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Tangled galaxies

MCG+05-31-045

In the centre is a large, oval-shaped galaxy, with a shining, ringed core. Left of its centre is a second, smaller galaxy with two spiral arms. The pair of galaxies are close enough that they appear to be merging: a tail of material with a few glowing spots connects from one of the smaller galaxy’s spiral arms to the larger galaxy. Both are surrounded in a faint halo. Several stars can be seen around the pair. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)

Previously the Hubble Picture of the Week series has featured a jewel in the queen’s hair — a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, named for the hair of the historical Egyptian queen. However, that galaxy is only one of many known in this constellation. This week’s new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts the cosmic tangle that is MCG+05-31-045, a pair of interacting galaxies located 390 million light-years away and a part of the so-called Coma galaxy cluster.

The Coma cluster is a particularly rich cluster and contains over a thousand known galaxies. Several can be easily seen with amateur telescopes. Most of them are elliptical galaxies, and that’s typical of a dense galaxy cluster like the Coma cluster: many elliptical galaxies are formed in close encounters between galaxies that stir them up, or even collisions that rip them apart. While the stars in the interacting galaxies can stay together, the gas in the galaxies is a different story — it’s twisted and compressed by gravitational forces, and rapidly used up to form new stars. When the hot, massive, blue stars die, there is little gas left to replace them with new generations of young stars. For interacting spiral galaxies, the regular orbits that produce their striking spiral arms are also disrupted. Whether through mergers or simple near misses, the result is a galaxy almost devoid of gas, with ageing stars orbiting in uncoordinated circles: an elliptical galaxy.

It’s very likely that a similar fate will befall MCG+05-31-045. As the smaller spiral galaxy is torn up and integrated into the larger galaxy, many new stars will form, and the hot, blue ones will quickly burn out, leaving cooler, redder stars behind in an elliptical galaxy much like the others in the Coma cluster. But this process won’t be complete for many millions of years — until then, Queen Berenice II will have to suffer the knots in her hair!

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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NASA's Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

Black Hole Jet and Accompanying Erupting Nova (Artist's Concept)

This is an artist's concept looking down into the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. A supermassive black hole ejects a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma, traveling at nearly the speed of light. In the foreground, to the right is a binary star system. The system is far from the black hole, but in the vicinity of the jet. In the system an aging, swelled-up, normal star spills hydrogen onto a burned-out white dwarf companion star. As the hydrogen accumulates on the surface of the dwarf, it reaches a tipping point where it explodes like a hydrogen bomb. Novae frequently pop-off throughout the giant galaxy of 1 trillion stars, but those near the jet seem to explode more frequently. So far, it's anybody's guess why black hole jets enhance the rate of nova eruptions. Credits: Artwork: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) 

M87

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the giant galaxy M87 shows a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blasting from the galaxy's 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole. The blowtorch-like jet seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. These novae are not caught inside the jet, but are apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby. During a recent 9-month survey, astronomers using Hubble found twice as many of these novae going off near the jet as elsewhere in the galaxy. The galaxy is the home of several trillion stars and thousands of star-like globular star clusters. Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, STScI, Alec Lessing (Stanford University), Mike Shara (AMNH) Acknowledgment: Edward Baltz (Stanford University) - Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby.

The finding is confounding researchers searching for an explanation. "We don't know what's going on, but it's just a very exciting finding," said Alec Lessing of Stanford University, lead author of the paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. "This means there's something missing from our understanding of how black hole jets interact with their surroundings."

A nova erupts in a double-star system where an aging, swelled-up, normal star spills hydrogen onto a burned-out white dwarf companion star. When the dwarf has tanked up a mile-deep surface layer of hydrogen that layer explodes like a giant nuclear bomb. The white dwarf isn't destroyed by the nova eruption, which ejects its surface layer and then goes back to siphoning fuel from its companion, and the nova-outburst cycle starts over again.

Hubble found twice as many novae going off near the jet as elsewhere in the giant galaxy during the surveyed time period. The jet is launched by a 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole surrounded by a disk of swirling matter. The black hole, engorged with infalling matter, launches a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blazing through space at nearly the speed of light. Anything caught in the energetic beam would be sizzled. But being near its blistering outflow is apparently also risky, according to the new Hubble findings.

The finding of twice as many novae near the jet implies that there are twice as many nova-forming double-star systems near the jet or that these systems erupt twice as often as similar systems elsewhere in the galaxy.

"There's something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently," said Lessing. "But it's not clear that it's a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster. Something might be doubling the mass transfer rate onto the white dwarfs near the jet." Another idea the researchers considered is that the jet is heating the dwarf's companion star, causing it to overflow further and dump more hydrogen onto the dwarf. However, the researchers calculated that this heating is not nearly large enough to have this effect.

"We're not the first people who've said that it looks like there's more activity going on around the M87 jet," said co-investigator Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "But Hubble has shown this enhanced activity with far more examples and statistical significance than we ever had before."

Shortly after Hubble's launch in 1990, astronomers used its first-generation Faint Object Camera (FOC) to peer into the center of M87 where the monster black hole lurks. They noted that unusual things were happening around the black hole. Almost every time Hubble looked, astronomers saw bluish "transient events" that could be evidence for novae popping off like camera flashes from nearby paparazzi. But the FOC's view was so narrow that Hubble astronomers couldn't look away from the jet to compare with the near-jet region. For over two decades, the results remained mysteriously tantalizing.

Compelling evidence for the jet's influence on the stars of the host galaxy was collected over a nine-month interval of Hubble observing with newer, wider-view cameras to count the erupting novae. This was a challenge for the telescope's observing schedule because it required revisiting M87 precisely every five days for another snapshot. Adding up all of the M87 images led to the deepest images of M87 that have ever been taken.

Hubble found 94 novae in the one-third of M87 that its camera can encompass. "The jet was not the only thing that we were looking at — we were looking at the entire inner galaxy. Once you plotted all known novae on top of M87 you didn't need statistics to convince yourself that there is an excess of novae along the jet. This is not rocket science. We made the discovery simply by looking at the images. And while we were really surprised, our statistical analyses of the data confirmed what we clearly saw," said Shara.

This accomplishment is entirely due to Hubble's unique capabilities. Ground-based telescope images do not have the clarity to see novae deep inside M87. They cannot resolve stars or stellar eruptions close to the galaxy's core because the black hole's surroundings are far too bright. Only Hubble can detect novae against the bright M87 background.

Novae are remarkably common in the universe. One nova erupts somewhere in M87 every day. But since there are at least 100 billion galaxies throughout the visible universe, around 1 million novae erupt every second somewhere out there.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

Source: HubbleSite/News

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About This Release

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Media Contact:

Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Science Contact:

Alec Lessing
Stanford University, Stanford, California

Michael Shara
American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York

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Contact Us: Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents

• Science Paper: The science paper by Alec Lessing et al., PDF (2.59 MB)
• NASA's Hubble Portal
• NASA Goddard's Video (on YouTube)

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NASA's Webb Provides Another Look Into Galactic Collisions

Arp 107 (NIRCam and MIRI Image)
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Arp 107 (MIRI Image) 

Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Arp 107 (Compass Image)
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

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Smile for the camera! An interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright “eyes” and the wide semicircular “smile.” The region has been observed before in infrared by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005, however NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays it in much higher resolution. This image is a composite, combining observations from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera).

NIRCam highlights the stars within both galaxies and reveals the connection between them: a transparent, white bridge of stars and gas pulled from both galaxies during their passage. MIRI data, represented in orange-red, shows star-forming regions and dust that is composed of soot-like organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. MIRI also provides a snapshot of the bright nucleus of the large spiral, home to a supermassive black hole.

The spiral galaxy is classified as a Seyfert galaxy, one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with galaxies that host quasars. Seyfert galaxies aren’t as luminous and distant as quasars, making them a more convenient way to study similar phenomena in lower energy light, like infrared.

This galaxy pair is similar to the Cartwheel Galaxy, one of the first interacting galaxies that Webb observed. Arp 107 may have turned out very similar in appearance to the Cartwheel, but since the smaller elliptical galaxy likely had an off-center collision instead of a direct hit, the spiral galaxy got away with only its spiral arms being disturbed.

The collision isn’t as bad as it sounds. Although there was star formation occurring before, collisions between galaxies can compress gas, improving the conditions needed for more stars to form. On the other hand, as Webb reveals, collisions also disperse a lot of gas, potentially depriving new stars of the material they need to form.

Webb has captured these galaxies in the process of merging, which will take hundreds of millions of years. As the two galaxies rebuild after the chaos of their collision, Arp 107 may lose its smile, but it will inevitably turn into something just as interesting for future astronomers to study.

Arp 107 is located 465 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

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About This Release

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Media Contact:

Matthew Brown
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

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Science Adviser: Macarena Garcia Marin (ESA)

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The lights of a galactic bar

NGC 4731

A close-in view of a barred spiral galaxy. The bright, glowing bar crosses the centre of the galaxy, with spiral arms curving away from its ends and continuing out of view. It’s surrounded by bright patches of light where stars are forming, as well as dark lines of dust. The galaxy’s clouds of gas spread out from the arms and bar, giving way to a dark background with some foreground stars and small, distant galaxies. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

This week, an image of the broad and sweeping spiral galaxy NGC 4731 is the Hubble Picture of the Week. This galaxy lies among the galaxies of the Virgo cluster, in the constellation Virgo, and is located 43 million light-years from Earth. This highly detailed image was created using six different filters. The abundance of colour illustrates the galaxy's billowing clouds of gas, dark dust bands, bright pink star-forming regions and, most obviously, the long, glowing bar with trailing arms.

Barred spiral galaxies outnumber both regular spirals and elliptical galaxies put together, numbering around 60% of all galaxies. The visible bar structure is a result of orbits of stars and gas in the galaxy lining up, forming a dense region that individual stars move in and out of over time. This is the same process that maintains a galaxy's spiral arms, but it is somewhat more mysterious for bars: spiral galaxies seem to form bars in their centres as they mature, accounting for the large number of bars we see today, but can also lose them later on as the accumulated mass along the bar grows unstable. The orbital patterns and the gravitational interactions within a galaxy that sustain the bar also transport matter and energy into it, fuelling star formation. Indeed, the observing programme studying NGC 4731 seeks to investigate this flow of matter in galaxies.

Beyond the bar, the spiral arms of NGC 4731 stretch out far past the confines of this close-in Hubble view. The galaxy’s elongated arms are thought to result from gravitational interactions with other, nearby galaxies in the Virgo cluster.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Measure of a great galactic disc

NGC 3156

A large elliptical galaxy. It appears to be formed of faint, grey, concentric ovals that grow progressively brighter towards the core, where there is a very bright point, and fade away at the edge. Two threads of dark red dust cross the galaxy’s disc, near the centre. The background is black and mostly empty, with only a few point stars and small galaxies. Credit:  ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sharples, S. Kaviraj, W. Keel

This dream-like Picture of the Week features the galaxy known as NGC 3156. It is a lenticular galaxy, meaning that it falls somewhere between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. It lies about 73 million light-years from Earth, in the minor equatorial constellation Sextans.

Sextans is a small constellation that belongs to the Hercules family of constellations. It itself is a constellation with an astronomical theme, being named for the instrument known as the sextant. Sextants are often thought of as navigational instruments that were invented in the 18th century. However, the sextant as an astronomical tool has been around for much longer than that: Islamic scholars developed astronomical sextants many hundreds of years earlier in order to measure angles in the sky. A particularly striking example is the enormous sextant with a radius of 36 metres that was developed by Ulugh Beg of the Timurid dynasty in the fifteenth century, located in Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. These early sextants may have been a development of the quadrant, a measuring device proposed by Ptolemy. A sextant, as the name suggests, is shaped like one-sixth of a circle, approximately the shape of the constellation.

Sextants are no longer in use in modern astronomy, having been replaced by instruments that are capable of measuring the positions of stars and astronomical objects much more accurately and precisely. NGC 3156 has been studied in many ways other than determining its precise position — from its cohort of globular clusters, to its relatively recent star formation, to the stars that are being destroyed by the supermassive black hole at its centre.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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M84: 'H' is for Hot and Huge in Chandra Image

M84
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Princeton Univ/C. Bambic et al.;
Optical: SDSS; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/ESO;
Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N.Wolk

JPEG (60.9 kb) - Large JPEG (1.8 MB) -Tiff (33.5 MB) -More Images

A Tour of M84 - More Videos

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With a single letter seemingly etched in the X-ray glow around it, a giant black hole at the center of a massive elliptical galaxy is making a mark on its surroundings.

This “H”-shaped structure is found in a detailed new X-ray map of the multimillion-degree gas around the galaxy Messier 84 (M84).

As gas is captured by the gravitational force of the black hole, some of it will fall into the abyss, never to be seen again. Some of the gas, however, avoids this fate and instead gets blasted away from the black hole in the form of jets of particles. These jets can push out cavities, in the hot gas surrounding the black hole. Given the orientation of the jets to Earth and the profile of the hot gas, the cavities in M84 form what appears to resemble the letter “H.” The H-shaped structure in the gas is an example of pareidolia, which is when people see familiar shapes or patterns in random data. Pareidolia can occur in all kinds of data from clouds to rocks and astronomical images.

M84 (labeled)
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Princeton Univ/C. Bambic et al.;
Optical: SDSS; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/ESO;
Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N.Wolk

Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a map of the hot gas (pink) in and around M84, reaching to within only about 100 light-years away from the black hole in the center of the galaxy. This gas radiates at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees, making it primarily observable in X-rays. The huge letter “H” is about 40,000 light-years tall — about half the width of the Milky Way. The radio image from the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) (blue) reveals the jets streaking away from the black hole. Optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (white) shows M84 and neighboring galaxies. The letter H and the position of the black hole are labeled. An additional graphic shows a close-up of the region marked with a square, and separate labels for the galaxy and the jets in the optical and radio images respectively.

 

M84
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Princeton Univ/C. Bambic et al.;
Optical: SDSS; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/ESO;
Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N.Wolk

Researchers studying M84 with Chandra and the VLA found that the jets may influence the flow of the hot gas towards the black hole even more than the gravitational pull from the black hole. For example, the team estimates matter is falling towards the black hole from the north — along the direction of the jet seen in radio waves — at about 500 times the mass of the Earth every year, a rate that is only a quarter of that from directions where the jet is not pointing, to the east and west. One possibility is that gas is lifted along the direction of the jet by the cavities, slowing the rate at which gas falls onto the black hole.

The authors tested a model called Bondi accretion, where all of the matter within a certain distance from a black hole — effectively inside a sphere — is close enough to be affected by a black hole’s gravity and start falling inwards at the same rate from all directions. (The dashed circle in the close-up image is centered on the black hole and shows the approximate distance from the black hole where gas should start falling inwards.) This effect is named after the scientist Hermann Bondi, and “accretion” refers to matter falling toward the black hole. The new results show that Bondi accretion is not occurring in M84 because matter is not falling towards the black hole evenly from all directions.

M84 is a cousin of Messier 87 (M87), the galaxy containing the first black hole imaged with the global Event Horizon Telescope network, and, like M87, is also a member of the Virgo Cluster. The supermassive black hole in M84, along with those in our galaxy, M87, NGC 3115, and NGC 1600, are the only ones close enough to Earth, or massive enough, for astronomers to see details in Chandra images which are so near the black hole that gas should be falling inwards. Like the black hole in M87, the one in M84 is producing a jet of particles; however, the point source of X-rays from material even closer to the black hole is over ten times fainter for M84. This allows more detailed study of gas falling towards the black hole in M84 that is farther out, preventing the faint X-rays produced by this gas from being overwhelmed by the X-ray glare from the point source.

A paper describing these results appears in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and a preprint is available here. The study was led by Christopher Bambic, a graduate student at Princeton University. Other authors include Helen Russell (University of Nottingham, United Kingdom), Christopher Reynolds (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK; University of Maryland, College Park), Andy Fabian (Institute of Astronomy), Brian McNamara (University of Waterloo, Canada; Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, Canada), and Paul Nulsen (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian).

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Quick Look: 'H' is for Hot and Huge in Chandra Image

Source: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

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Fast Facts for M84:

Scale: Image is about 9 arcmin (140,000 light-years) across.
Category: Normal Galaxies & Starburst Galaxies, Black Holes
Coordinates (J2000): RA 12h 25m 03.74s | Dec +12° 53´ 13.14"
Constellation: Virgo
Observation Dates: 26 observations from May 2000 through May 2019
Observation Time: 234 hours 39 minutes (9 days 18 hours 39 minutes)

Obs. ID: 803, 5908, 6131, 20539-20543, 21845, 12867, 22126-22128, 22142-22144, 22153, 22163, 22164, 22166, 22174-22177, 22195, 22196

Instrument: ACIS
Also Known As: NGC 4374
References: Bambic, C. et al. 2023, MNRAS,(accepted); arXiv:2301.11937
Color Code: X-ray: pink; Optical: red, green, blue; Radio: blue;
Distance Estimate: About 55 million light-years

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A Marvel of Galactic Morphology

NGC 1156C
Credit:ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. B. Tully, R. Jansen, R. Windhorst

The galaxy featured in this Picture of the Week has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust — these are the locations of intense star formation. Yet it also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.

NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. It has a variety of different features that are of interest to astronomers. A dwarf irregular galaxy, it’s also classified as isolated, meaning no other galaxies are nearby enough to influence its odd shape and continuing star formation. The extreme energy of freshly formed young stars gives colour to the galaxy, against the red glow of ionised hydrogen gas, while its centre is densely-packed with older generations of stars.

Hubble has captured NGC 1156 before — this new image features data from a galactic gap-filling programme simply titled “Every Known Nearby Galaxy”. Astronomers noticed that only three quarters of the galaxies within just over 30 million light-years of Earth had been observed by Hubble in sufficient detail to study the makeup of the stars within them. They proposed that in between larger projects, Hubble could take snapshots of the remaining quarter — including NGC 1156. Gap-filling programmes like this one ensure that the best use is made of Hubble’s valuable observing time.

Source:ESA/Hubble/potw

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Celebrating Hubble's 32nd Birthday with an Eclectic Galaxy Grouping

Hickson Compact Group 40

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40. This menagerie includes three spiral-shaped galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy. Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler. Caught in a leisurely gravitational dance, the whole group is so crowded that it could fit within a region of space that is less than twice the diameter of our Milky Way's stellar disk.

Though such cozy galaxy groupings can be found in the heart of huge galaxy clusters, these galaxies are notably isolated in their own small patch of the universe, in the direction of the constellation Hydra. One possible explanation is that there's a lot of dark matter (an unknown and invisible form of matter) associated with these galaxies. If they come close together, then the dark matter can form a big cloud within which the galaxies are orbiting. As the galaxies plow through the dark matter, they feel a resistive force due to its gravitational effects. This slows their motion and makes the galaxies lose energy, so they fall together. Therefore, this snapshot catches the galaxies at a very special moment in their lifetimes. In about 1 billion years they will eventually collide and merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy.

Astronomers have studied this compact galaxy group not only in visible light, but also in radio, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths. Almost all of them have a compact radio source in their cores, which could be evidence for the presence of supermassive black holes. X-ray observations show that the galaxies have been gravitationally interacting due to the presence of a lot of hot gas among the galaxies. Infrared observations reveal clues to the rate of new star formation.

Though over 100 such compact galaxy groups have been cataloged in sky surveys going back several decades, Hickson Compact Group 40 is one of the most densely packed. Observations suggest that such tight groups may have been more abundant in the early universe and provided fuel for powering black holes, known as quasars, whose light from superheated infalling material blazed across space. Studying the details of galaxies in nearby groups like this help astronomers sort out when and where galaxies assembled themselves, and what they are assembled from.

Hubble was deployed into orbit around Earth by NASA astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery, on April 25, 1990. The telescope has taken 1.5 million observations of approximately 50,000 celestial targets to date. This treasure trove of knowledge about the universe is stored for public access in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hubble's unique capabilities in observing visible and ultraviolet light are a critical scientific complement to the infrared-light observations of the recently launched Webb Space Telescope, which will begin science observations this summer. Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, STScI. Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Release Images - Release Videos

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NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40.

This menagerie includes three spiral-shaped galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy. Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler.

Caught in a leisurely gravitational dance, the whole group is so crowded that it could fit within a region of space that is less than twice the diameter of our Milky Way's stellar disk.

Though such cozy galaxy groupings can be found in the heart of huge galaxy clusters, these galaxies are notably isolated in their own small patch of the universe, in the direction of the constellation Hydra.

One possible explanation is that there's a lot of dark matter (an unknown and invisible form of matter) associated with these galaxies. If they come close together, then the dark matter can form a big cloud within which the galaxies are orbiting. As the galaxies plow through the dark matter they feel a resistive force due to its gravitational effects. This slows their motion and makes the galaxies lose energy, so they fall together.

Therefore, this snapshot catches the galaxies at a very special moment in their lifetimes. In about 1 billion years they will eventually collide and merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy.

Astronomers have studied this compact galaxy group not only in visible light, but also in radio, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths. Almost all of them have a compact radio source in their cores, which could be evidence for the presence of supermassive black holes. X-ray observations show that the galaxies have been gravitationally interacting due to the presence of a lot of hot gas among the galaxies. Infrared observations reveal clues to the rate of new star formation.

Though over 100 such compact galaxy groups have been cataloged in sky surveys going back several decades, Hickson Compact Group 40 is one of the most densely packed. Observations suggest that such tight groups may have been more abundant in the early universe and provided fuel for powering black holes, known as quasars, whose light from superheated infalling material blazed across space. Studying the details of galaxies in nearby groups like this help astronomers sort out when and where galaxies assembled themselves, and what they are assembled from.

"I remember seeing this on a sky survey and saying, 'wow look at that!'" said Paul Hickson of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. "All that I was using at the time was a big plastic ruler and a magnifying glass while looking over sky survey prints." He re-discovered the group by browsing through a collection of peculiar galaxies first published by Halton Arp in 1966.

Hubble was deployed into orbit around Earth by NASA astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery, on April 25, 1990. The telescope has taken 1.5 million observations of approximately 50,000 celestial targets to date. This treasure trove of knowledge about the universe is stored for public access in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hubble's unique capabilities in observing visible and ultraviolet light are a critical scientific complement to the infrared-light observations of the recently launched Webb Space Telescope, which will begin science observations this summer.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

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Credits:

Release: NASA, ESA, STScI

Media Contact: Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
 

Permissions: Content Use Policy

Contact Us: Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents:

• NASA's Hubble Portal
• ESA/Hubble's Press Release
• Goddard's Video (on YouTube)

Source: HubbleSite/News

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Do massive red elliptical galaxies line up?

Fig. 1: Two examples of how a non-uniform gravitational field can affect the shape of an otherwise spherical DM halo: the halo can either be stretched (top) or squeezed (bottom). Here g denotes the gravitational acceleration. The arrow direction and length denote the direction and magnitude of g, respectively, at different locations. From Catelan et al. 2001

Fig. 2: Comparison between the predicted galaxy shape – based on the reconstructed large-scale gravitational tidal field for an arbitrary intrinsic alignment amplitude (cyan) – and the actually measured galaxy shape (orange). The optimal intrinsic alignment amplitude is then extracted by essentially matching these two ellipses, for all galaxies in the sample. Credit: Eleni Tsaprazi

Fig. 3: Measurement of the galaxy intrinsic alignment amplitude AI, as a function of the smoothing scale applied in the tidal field reconstruction. The blue band shows the 1-sigma uncertainty, accounting for Gaussian noise in the galaxy shape, and all uncertainties associated with the reconstruction. The vertical yellow band highlights the window below the resolution of the tidal field reconstruction, within which there can be no reliable conclusion drawn from the measurement.

Are galaxy orientations distributed randomly in the cosmos? What appears to be a simple question might not only shed light on our understanding of galaxy and cluster formation, but also further our knowledge of cosmological models. MPA scientists and collaborators attempt to settle this question through the first direct, field-based measurement of whether and how massive red elliptical galaxies align with the tidal field of large scale structure. Their result confirms predictions of the (linear) alignment model of galaxy intrinsic alignment. The newly presented method also opens up new avenues for cosmology and astrophysics.

Our current picture of structure formation in the standard cosmological model Lambda-CDM (Cold Dark Matter with a cosmological constant Lambda) involves a large-scale cosmic web where spherical matter over-densities collapse under their own gravity. The collapse forms a Dark Matter halo that further hosts the galaxies, including one central massive red elliptical and multiple satellites. Assuming this scenario is correct, one can picture the following: as the collapse occurs in an external, non-uniform gravitational field, the halos can be squeezed or stretched such that their shapes and orientations become elongated and align with this external tidal force (Fig. 1). Such an external tidal field is very common due to the large-scale distribution of matter within the cosmic web. If the shape of a massive central galaxy then tends to follow that of its host Dark Matter halo, its shape should intrinsically align and trace the tidal field of the large-scale structure.

Further, the intrinsic alignment property of galaxies is typically a significant source of systematics in cosmic shear analyses. These measure how the shapes and orientations of background galaxies are systematically distorted and sheared by projected distributions of foreground masses, through the weak gravitational lensing effect. This kind of measurement (of the extrinsic alignment of background galaxies) provides a complementary and competitive constraint on cosmological parameters, as it directly probes the total matter distribution. However, it is important that the intrinsic alignment of those background galaxies is modelled and accounted for properly.

Recently, an international team co-led by Eleni Tsaparazi (PhD candidate, Stockholm University) and Minh Nguyen (MPA PhD alumni, now a postdoctoral research fellow at LCTP, Michigan) has measured and detected the intrinsic alignment of massive red elliptical galaxies through one-to-one (cross-)correlations between their shapes and their surrounding large-scale tidal fields. For the first time, this field-based measurement of galaxy intrinsic alignment was obtained in two steps:

First, the team infers the three-dimensional tidal field as a function of the smoothing scale in the inference within the volume observed by the SDSS-BOSS survey, while properly accounting for uncertainties and systematics such as survey geometries, selection functions and foregrounds. This amounts to hundreds of realizations of the large-scale tidal field compatible with the BOSS LOWZ and CMASS galaxy samples.

Second, the team develops a robust Bayesian inference framework that, at each scale and for each galaxy in a sub-sample of LOWZ galaxies, compares all tidal field realizations to the galaxy shape, both projected to the plane perpendicular to the line of sight (Fig. 2). The framework further allows them to optimally extract the galaxy intrinsic alignment signal for a given theoretical model of the alignment. In particular, the team studies and constrains the linear alignment model wherein the alignment signal is linearly proportional to the strength of the large-scale tidal field at the location of the given galaxy.

Following this two-step-process, the team detects a highly significant signal that galaxies in the LOWZ sample, which are luminous red ellipticals, indeed tend to align with the large-scale tidal field around these galaxies. The signal is significant on a broad range of smoothing scales – reaching 4 sigma significance at 20 Mpc/h – with its amplitude being relatively stable on all scales considered, and consistent with the prediction of the linear alignment model.

In a crucial validation test of the detection the team shuffles the galaxies and measures a null signal, i.e. no correlation between a galaxy shape and its local tidal field, on all scales considered. This shows that the non-negligible sources of systematics are all accounted for properly in the study. The team also detects no evolution of the linear alignment amplitude with luminosity, color or redshift.

The result of this study and its two-step approach promises fascinating avenues for cosmology and astrophysics. On the one hand, this type of cross-correlation measurement can serve as a cross-validation of the standard model Lambda-CDM, which is typically assumed in the first step. On the other hand, in the second step,different intrinsic alignment models can be studied and constrained with a minimal set of modeling assumptions at the field level. This will further not only our knowledge of galaxy formation, but also our ability to constrain cosmological parameters through the aforementioned weak lensing analyses.

Contact:
 

Minh Nguyen
minh@MPA-Garching.MPG.DE

Original publication

1. Eleni Tsaprazi, Nhat-Minh Nguyen, Jens Jasche, Fabian Schmidt, Guilhem Lavaux
Field-level inference of galaxy intrinsic alignment from the SDSS-III BOSS survey
submitted to JCAP
Source

Source: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

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ALMA Identified Dark Ancestors of Massive Elliptical Galaxies

ALMA identified 39 faint galaxies that are not seen with the Hubble Space Telescope’s most in-depth view of the Universe 10 billion light-years away. This example image shows a comparison of Hubble and ALMA observations. The squares numbered from 1 to 4 are the locations of faint galaxies unseen in the Hubble image. Credit: The University of Tokyo/CEA/NAOJ.

Artist’s impression of the distant galaxies observed with ALMA. ALMA identified faint galaxies invisible to the Hubble Space Telescope. Researchers assume that those HST-dark galaxies are the ancestors of massive elliptical galaxies in the present Universe. Credit: NAOJ

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Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to identify 39 faint galaxies that are not seen with the Hubble Space Telescope’s most in-depth view of the Universe, 10 billion light-years away. They are ten times more numerous than similarly massive but optically–bright galaxies detected with Hubble. The research team assumes that these faint galaxies precede massive elliptical galaxies in the present Universe. However, no significant theories for the evolution of the Universe have predicted such an abundant population of star-forming, dark, massive galaxies. The new ALMA results throw into question our understanding of the early Universe. These results appear in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

“Previous studies have found extremely active star-forming galaxies in the early Universe, but their population is quite limited,” says Tao Wang, lead author of this research at the University of Tokyo, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). “Star formation in the dark galaxies we identified is less intense, but they are 100 times more abundant than the extreme starbursts. It is important to study such a major component of the history of the Universe to comprehend galaxy formation.”

Wang and his team targeted three ALMA windows to the deep Universe opened up by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST): the CANDELS fields. The team discovered 63 extremely red objects in the infrared images taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope: they are too red to be detected with HST. However, Spitzer’s limited spatial resolution prevented astronomers from identifying their nature.

ALMA detected submillimeter-wave emission from 39 out of the 63 extremely red objects. Thanks to its high resolution and sensitivity, ALMA confirmed that they are massive, star-forming galaxies that are producing stars 100 times more efficiently than the Milky Way. These galaxies are representative of the majority of massive galaxies in the Universe 10 billion years ago, most of which have so far been missed by previous studies.

“By maintaining this rate of star formation, these ALMA-detected galaxies will likely transform into the first population of massive elliptical galaxies formed in the early Universe,” says David Elbaz, an astronomer at CEA, and coauthor on the paper, “But there is a problem. They are unexpectedly abundant.” The researchers estimated their number density to be equivalent to 530 objects in a square degree in the sky. This number density well exceeds predictions from current theoretical models and computer simulations. Also, according to the widely accepted model of the Universe with a particular type of dark matter, it is challenging to build a large number of massive objects in such an early phase of the Universe. Together, the present ALMA results challenge our current understanding of the evolution of the Universe.

“Like the galaxy M87, from which astronomers recently obtained the first-ever image of a black hole, massive elliptical galaxies are located in the heart of galaxy clusters. Scientist believes that these galaxies formed most of their stars in the early Universe,” explains Kotaro Kohno, a professor at the University of Tokyo and member of the research team. “However, previous searches for the progenitors of these massive galaxies have been unsuccessful because they were based solely on galaxies that are easily detectable by HST. The discovery of this large number of massive, HST-dark galaxies provides direct evidence for the early assembly of massive galaxies during the first billion years of the Universe.” More detailed follow-up observations with ALMA and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are essential to provide further insights into the nature of these galaxies. New studies could enable a complete view of galaxy formation in the early Universe.”

Source:  Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)/

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Contacts

Tao Wang
Postdoctoral fellow
Institute of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo / National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Email: taowang@ioa.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Nicolás Lira
Education and Public Outreach Coordinator
Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago - Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6519
Cell phone: +56 9 9445 7726
Email: nicolas.lira@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsuv Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chilev Observatory
, Tokyo - Japan
Phone: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Mariya Lyubenova
ESO Outreach Astronomer
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 32 00 61 88
Email: mlyubeno@eso.org

Iris Nijman
Public Information Officer
National Radio Astronomy Observatory Charlottesville, Virginia - USA
Cell phone: +1 (434) 249 3423
Email: alma-pr@nrao.edu

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Additional Information

These observation results are published as T. Wang et al. “A dominant population of optically invisible massive galaxies in the early Universe” in Nature on August 7, 2019.

The research team members are:

T. Wang (The University of Tokyo/CEA/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), C. Schreiber (CEA/Leiden University/Oxford University), D. Elbaz (CEA), Y. Yoshimura (The University of Tokyo), K. Kohno (The University of Tokyo), X. Shu (Anhui Normal University), Y. Yamaguchi (The University of Tokyo), M. Pannella (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat,), M. Franco (CEA), J. Huang (National Astronomical Observatories of China), C.-F. Lim (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics), and W.-H. Wang (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics).

This research was supported by NAOJ ALMA Scientific Research Grant Number 2017-06B, JSPS KAKENHI (No. JP17H06130), funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 312725 (ASTRODEEP), NSFC 11573001, National Basic Research Program 2015CB857005, and Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan Grant (105-2112-M-001-029-MY3).

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning, and operation of ALMA.

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SDSS J1430+1339: Storm Rages in Cosmic Teacup

SDSS 1430+1339

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/G. Lansbury et al; 

Optical: NASA/STScI/W. Keel et al.

JPEG (222.6 kb) - Large JPEG (1.2 MB) - Tiff (16.5 MB) - More Images

A Tour of the Teacup - More Animations

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Fancy a cup of cosmic tea? This one isn't as calming as the ones on Earth. In a galaxy hosting a structure nicknamed the "Teacup," a galactic storm is raging.

The source of the cosmic squall is a supermassive black hole buried at the center of the galaxy, officially known as SDSS 1430+1339. As matter in the central regions of the galaxy is pulled toward the black hole, it is energized by the strong gravity and magnetic fields near the black hole. The infalling material produces more radiation than all the stars in the host galaxy. This kind of actively growing black hole is known as a quasar.

Located about 1.1 billion light years from Earth, the Teacup's host galaxy was originally discovered in visible light images by citizen scientists in 2007 as part of the Galaxy Zoo project, using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Since then, professional astronomers using space-based telescopes have gathered clues about the history of this galaxy with an eye toward forecasting how stormy it will be in the future. This new composite image contains X-ray data from Chandra (blue) along with an optical view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (red and green). 

The "handle" of the Teacup is a ring of optical and X-ray light surrounding a giant bubble. This handle-shaped feature, which is located about 30,000 light-years from the supermassive black hole, was likely formed by one or more eruptions powered by the black hole. Radio emission — shown in a separate composite image with the optical data — also outlines this bubble, and a bubble about the same size on the other side of the black hole. 

Previously, optical telescope observations showed that atoms in the handle of the Teacup were ionized, that is, these particles became charged when some of their electrons were stripped off, presumably by the quasar's strong radiation in the past. The amount of radiation required to ionize the atoms was compared with that inferred from optical observations of the quasar. This comparison suggested that the quasar's radiation production had diminished by a factor of somewhere between 50 and 600 over the last 40,000 to 100,000 years. This inferred sharp decline led researchers to conclude that the quasar in the Teacup was fading or dying.

New data from Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton mission are giving astronomers an improved understanding of the history of this galactic storm. The X-ray spectra (that is, the amount of X-rays over a range of energies) show that the quasar is heavily obscured by gas. This implies that the quasar is producing much more ionizing radiation than indicated by the estimates based on the optical data alone, and that rumors of the quasar's death may have been exaggerated. Instead the quasar has dimmed by only a factor of 25 or less over the past 100,000 years.

The Chandra data also show evidence for hotter gas within the bubble, which may imply that a wind of material is blowing away from the black hole. Such a wind, which was driven by radiation from the quasar, may have created the bubbles found in the Teacup.

Astronomers have previously observed bubbles of various sizes in elliptical galaxies, galaxy groups and galaxy clusters that were generated by narrow jets containing particles traveling near the speed of light, that shoot away from the supermassive black holes. The energy of the jets dominates the power output of these black holes, rather than radiation.

In these jet-driven systems, astronomers have found that the power required to generate the bubbles is proportional to their X-ray brightness. Surprisingly, the radiation-driven Teacup quasar follows this pattern. This suggests radiation-dominated quasar systems and their jet-dominated cousins can have similar effects on their galactic surroundings.

A study describing these results was published in the March 20, 2018 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available online. The authors are George Lansbury from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK; Miranda E. Jarvis from the Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, Germany; Chris M. Harrison from the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany; David M. Alexander from Durham University in Durham, UK; Agnese Del Moro from the Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik in Garching, Germany; Alastair Edge from Durham University in Durham, UK; James R. Mullaney from The University of Sheffield in Sheffield, UK and Alasdair Thomson from the University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

A Quick Look at the Teacup

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Fast Facts for SDSS J1430+1339:

Scale: Image is about 16 arcsec (85,000 light years) across
Category: Quasars & Active Galaxies, Normal Galaxies & Starburst Galaxies
Coordinates (J2000): RA 14h 30m 29s | Dec +13° 39´ 11.79"
Constellation: Boötes
Observation Date: April 19, 2016
Observation Time: 13 hours 26 minutes
Obs. ID: 18149
Instrument: ACIS
References: Lansbury, G. et al. 2018. ApJ Letters, 856, 1; arXiv:1803.00009
Color Code: X-ray: Blue; Optical: Red, Green
Distance Estimate: About 1.1 billion light years

Source: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

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