Yale discovery of ‘young’ supermassive black holes challenges current theory
1 December 2011
Astronomers at Yale University have discovered what appear to be three fast-growing supermassive black holes in a relatively young, still-forming galaxy.
The discovery raises the possibility that this type of black hole continues to form billions of years after the Big Bang, challenging current theory. Astronomers previously thought all supermassive black holes emerged soon after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Astronomers Discover Giant Black Holes at Edge of Universe
15 June 2011
Astronomers have been peering farther and farther into space, and back in time, using the world’s most powerful telescopes to detect galaxies billions of light years away that existed when the universe was just a fraction of its current age. But detecting the giant black holes thought to lurk at the centers of those galaxies has proven much more difficult.
Now a team of astronomers has discovered the earliest black holes ever detected, despite the fact that they are hidden from view by their host galaxies. They also measured the average growth rate of the black holes and discovered that they grow and evolve in tandem with their galaxies – something that astronomers had observed locally but which they knew little about when it came to the early, distant universe.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Find out more at: Chandra X-ray Center press release (including animations and images), NASA.gov press release
Youtube video of NASA press conference
Media coverage at:
Nature News & Views (subscription), CNN, TIME, LA Times, The Telegraph (incl. video), Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic, CBS, PBS, Astronomy Now, Der Spiegel, DRS, ORF
Citizen Scientists Join Search for Earth-like Planets
16 Dec 2010
Web users around the globe will be able to help professional astronomers in their search for Earth-like planets thanks to a new online citizen science project called Planet Hunters that launches Dec. 16. at www.planethunters.org.
Planet Hunters, which is the latest in the Zooniverse citizen science project collection, will ask users to help analyze data taken by NASA’s Kepler mission. The space telescope has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system—called exoplanets—since its launch in March 2009.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Watch the Planethunters
video:
Credit: Doug Forbush
Credit: Doug Forbush
Media coverage at:
MSNBC, Universe Today
The Sudden Death of the Nearest Quasar - Hanny's Voorwerp Explained
3 Nov 2010
While sorting through hundreds of galaxy images as part of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project two years ago, Dutch schoolteacher and volunteer astronomer Hanny van Arkel stumbled upon a strange-looking object that baffled professional astronomers. Two years later, a team led by Yale University researchers has discovered that the unique object represents a snapshot in time that reveals surprising clues about the life cycle of black holes.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Wired, Discovery News, Astronomy Magazine, NASA Blueshift Blog, HEASARC Picture of the Week
"Hanny and the Mystery of the Voorwerp" Graphic Novel Released!
3 Sept 2010
The story of the Discovery of Hanny's Voorwerp has been turned into a graphic novel released at Dragon*Con today. Pre-order your physical copy or download the PDF version.
Media coverage at:
Bad Astronomy Blog
After Growth Spurt, Supermassive Black Holes Spend Half Their Lives Veiled in Dust
25 March 2010
New Haven, Conn. — Supermassive black holes found at the centers of distant galaxies undergo huge growth spurts as a result of galactic collisions, according to a new study by astronomers at Yale University and the University of Hawaii. Their findings appear in the March 25 edition of Science Express.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Credit: Karen Teramura (IfA/Hawaii)
Media coverage at:
ScienceNOW, spektrum direkt, Science Daily
Galaxy Zoo Hunters Help Astronomers Discover Rare ‘Green Pea’ Galaxies
27 July 2009
New Haven, Conn. — A team of astronomers has discovered a group of rare galaxies called the “Green Peas” with the help of citizen scientists working through an online project called Galaxy Zoo. The finding could lend unique insights into how galaxies form stars in the early universe.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Galaxy Zoo 2 launches!
20 February 2009
New Haven, Conn. — As an astronomy graduate student at Oxford in 2007, Kevin Schawinski faced a rather sizable problem: He needed to sort through 50,000 images of galaxies taken by a robotic telescope one by one, and classify each galaxy according to its shape.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Verdict: Supermassive Black Holes Not Guilty of Shutting Down Star Formation
21 January 2009
New Haven, Conn. — A team of Yale University astronomers has discovered that galaxies stop forming stars long before their central supermassive black holes reach their most powerful stage, meaning the black holes can’t be responsible for shutting down star formation.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Media coverage at:
Bad Astronomy Blog, Spaceflight Now, Science Daily, Science News
'Cosmic Ghost' Discovered by Volunteer Astronomer
5 August 2008
New Haven, Conn. — When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky.
Read more at the Yale Office of Public Affairs...
Or, you could listen to the podcast [mp3]
This image of IC 2497 and Hanny's Voorwerp was taken by Dan Smith, Peter Herbert and Matt Jarvis using the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Spain. It was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day and on Slashdot.org. We have blogged repeatedly about the discovery of the Voowerp by Hanny van Arkel using galaxyzoo.org and the Voorwerp even has its own Wikipedia page. We've also been given time on the Hubble Space Telescope next year to have a look at the Voowerp. Amazingly, we got word of the success of the proposal on Hanny's 25th birthday!
Media coverage at:
Der Spiegel, ScienceDaily, Oxford Mail, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, New Scientist, Reuters, BBC News, MSNBC, ABC News, CNN, NPR Science Friday [mp3]
Ultraviolet gives view inside real ‘death star’
13 June 2008
Scientists have, for the first time, observed a flash of ultraviolet light from within a dying star giving vital evidence of how stars turn into supernovae.
An international team, including nine scientists from Oxford University, combined data from ground-bound telescopes observing visible light from supernovae with data from a space telescope looking for an earlier peak in ultraviolet light from an associated dying star. They were able to spot telltale signs of the shockwave that forms within a star before it explodes into a supernova. A report of the work appears in this week’s Science.
Read more at University of Oxford Media and my old webpage...
You can access the full paper and supplements at Science and the preprint on astro-ph.
To
get the full sequence of
Hubble Space Telescope and GALEX images, please click on the left
image. On the right, you can get a PDF version of the chart explaining
the five stages of supernova shock breakout.
Media coverage at:
The Telegraph, The Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, Discovery, Boston Globe, Tagesanzeiger
Media coverage at:
The Telegraph, The Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, Discovery, Boston Globe, Tagesanzeiger
Last updated 11/01/2010