Andromedasbitch-blog - Spacey

Here’s something for you to start the week off with a bang. This is a computer simulation of a supernova event, the moments when a massive star collapses in on itself to evolve into a neutron star. The violent and knobbly shock wave from the collapse expands out in a fraction of a second, with the coldest gas in the model colored blue and the hottest colored red. Ejected stellar material moves away from the core at speeds that can reach almost 19,000 miles per second.

The simulation was created in 2012 by the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Project. Now, direct observations of a supernova called 1987A using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array has confirmed a detail found in the model–that the collapse leads to a lopsided ejection of debris in one direction and the stellar core into another. 

Read more from Caltech about how models predicted that perfectly spherical star cores evolve into asymmetric blobs with plumes of broiling hot gasses powered by neutrino emissions. 

(Hubble Space Telescope captured supernova 1987A with a bright ring of material ejected from the dying star before it detonated. The ring is being lit up by the explosion’s shock wave.Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA.)

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1960’s(USA) Color Photography

Neutron Star by Adolf Schaller from the book Extraterrestrials (1994)

Aboard the International Space Station this morning, Astronaut Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully captured JAXA’s Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) at 6:28 a.m. EDT.

Yui commanded the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to reach out and grapple the HTV-5, while NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren provided assistance and Scott Kelly monitored HTV-5 systems. The HTV-5 launched aboard an H-IIB rocket at 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. Since then, the spacecraft has performed a series of engine burns to fine-tune its course for arrival at the station.

The HTV-5 is delivering more than 8,000 pounds of equipment, supplies and experiments in a pressurized cargo compartment. The unpressurized compartment will deliver the 1,400-pound CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) investigation, an astrophysics mission that will search for signatures of dark matter and provide the highest energy direct measurements of the cosmic ray electron spectrum.

Below is a breathtaking image shared by Astronaut Scott Kelly of the HTV-5 and Canadarm2, which reached out and grappled the cargo spacecraft.

Astronomers Found a Star Inside a Star, 40 Years After It Was First Theorized

What is a gamma-ray burst?

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several minutes. The initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived “afterglow” emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, microwave and radio).

Most observed GRBs are believed to consist of a narrow beam of intense radiation released during a supernova or hypernova as a rapidly rotating, high-mass star collapses to form a neutron star, quark star, or black hole. A subclass of GRBs (the “short” bursts) appear to originate from a different process - this may be due to the merger of binaryneutron stars. The cause of the precursor burst observed in some of these short events may be due to the development of a resonance between the crust and core of such stars as a result of the massive tidal forces experienced in the seconds leading up to their collision, causing the entire crust of the star to shatter.

Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be highly focused explosions, with most of the explosion energy collimated into a narrow jet traveling at speeds exceeding 99.995% of the speed of light. The approximate angular width of the jet (that is, the degree of spread of the beam) can be estimated directly by observing the achromatic “jet breaks” in afterglow light curves: a time after which the slowly decaying afterglow begins to fade rapidly as the jet slows and can no longer beam its radiation as effectively

Image credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde

Gravitational distortions caused by a Black Hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Nine Facts about Black Holes 1. The gravitational pull of a Black Hole can greatly slow down Time itself, according to Relativity. If you could take a spaceship to a Black Hole, Orbit around it for awhile, and then fly back to Earth, you would have successfully traveled to the Future. 2. Some equations suggest that every Black Hole contains a Universe - which would mean our Universe is inside a Black Hole right now. 3. While Black Holes are most definitely Real, they have theoretical opposites called White Holes, which would endlessly spew Matter into the Universe. They were thought to be purely hypothetical, but an unusual Gamma Ray burst observed in 2006 is turning out to be a potential candidate for a real-life White Hole. 4. Supermassive Black Holes likely exist at the Centers of most Galaxies. And since Galaxies sometimes collide, that means Black Holes do too, and when that happens, it’s thought that one Black Hole ‘kicks’ the other out of the Galaxy. 5. Black Holes are Black because their Gravity is so strong that not even Light can escape. But they do emit Radiation, usually called Hawking Radiation, after Stephen Hawking, who first theorized its Existence. 6. The Milky Way has a Supermassive Black Hole in its Center, and it seems to have exploded about 2 million years ago in an event known as a Seyfert Flare. The Radiation from the Black Hole would have been 100 million times more powerful than it is now; the Explosion may have even been visible from Earth. 7. Black Holes can emit Material at nearly the Speed of Light. Using an array of radio Telescopes, a team of scientists looked at a Galaxy 1.5 billion light-years from Earth and found a Black Hole doing just that. The jet is so Powerful that it’s blowing Gas right out of the Galaxy. 8. Black Holes are the densest Objects in Existence. If you made a Black Hole with the Mass of the entire Earth, the Black Hole would be 9 millimeters across. 9. Black Holes can form when Stars collapse in on themselves after Death. They keep growing by eating the Dust and Gas around them. No one’s really sure how the biggest ones, called Supermassive Black Holes, are born.

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