Victor Buso was looking forward to testing his new camera on September 20, 2016. The locksmith and amateur astronomer waited for nightfall and headed out to his rooftop observatory in the city of Rosario, Argentina, where his 15.7 inch (40 cm) Newtonian telescope was waiting. He had no idea he would help capture the start of one of the most unpredictable events in the universe; a supernova.
An amateur astronomer accidentally caught an exploding star on camera—and it gets better
AbstractWe present observations of DES16C2nm, the first spectroscopically confirmed hydrogen-free superluminous supernova (SLSN-I) at redshift $z\approx 2$. DES16C2nm was discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Supernova Program, with follow-up photometric data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Gemini, and the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope supplementing the DES data. Spectroscopic observations confirm DES16C2nm to be at z = 1.998, and spectroscopically similar to Gaia16apd (a SLSN-I at z = 0.102), with a peak absolute magnitude of $U=-22.26\pm 0.06$. The high redshift of DES16C2nm provides a unique opportunity to study the ultraviolet (UV) properties of SLSNe-I. Combining DES16C2nm with 10 similar events from the literature, we show that there exists a homogeneous class of SLSNe-I in the UV (${\lambda }_{\mathrm{rest}}\approx 2500$ Å), with peak luminosities in the (rest-frame) U band, and increasing absorption to shorter wavelengths. There is no evidence that the mean photometric and spectroscopic properties of SLSNe-I differ between low ($z\lt 1$) and high redshift ($z\gt 1$), but there is clear evidence of diversity in the spectrum at ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{rest}}\lt 2000\,\mathring{\rm A} $, possibly caused by the variations in temperature between events. No significant correlations are observed between spectral line velocities and photometric luminosity. Using these data, we estimate that SLSNe-I can be discovered to z = 3.8 by DES. While SLSNe-I are typically identified from their blue observed colors at low redshift ($z\lt 1$), we highlight that at $z\gt 2$ these events appear optically red, peaking in the observer-frame z-band. Such characteristics are critical to identify these objects with future facilities such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Euclid, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope, which should detect such SLSNe-I to z = 3.5, 3.7, and 6.6, respectively.
In the real world, your past uniquely determines your future. If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space.But a UC Berkeley mathematician has found some types of black holes in which this law breaks down. If someone were to venture into one of these relatively benign black holes, they could survive, but their past would be obliterated and they could have an infinite number of possible futures.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25151An "amateur" Argentinian astronomer from Rosario has observed, for the first time, the start of a supernova (IIb) explosion, confirming theoretical models.http://www.agenciasinc.es/Multimedia/Fotografias/Un-astronomo-aficionado-capta-una-supernova-en-directo (in Spanish)
Formation of the Earth's inner core is so baffling, scientists say it shouldn't existQuoteAccording to the popular view of the Earth's formation, about one billion years ago, our planet's molten liquid inner core spontaneously began to crystallise, growing rapidly to the extent that it reaches today – around 760 miles in diameter.However, a new study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters contradicts this theory, suggesting it is impossible.http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/formation-earths-inner-core-so-baffling-scientists-say-it-shouldnt-exist-1661119
According to the popular view of the Earth's formation, about one billion years ago, our planet's molten liquid inner core spontaneously began to crystallise, growing rapidly to the extent that it reaches today – around 760 miles in diameter.However, a new study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters contradicts this theory, suggesting it is impossible.
In the 1980s, researchers began discovering extremely bright sources of X-rays in the outer portions of galaxies, away from the supermassive black holes that dominate their centers. At first, the researchers thought these cosmic objects—called ultraluminous X-ray sources, or ULXs—were hefty black holes with more than 10 times the mass of the sun. But observations beginning in 2014 from NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and other space telescopes are showing that some ULXs, which glow with X-ray light equal in energy to millions of suns, are actually neutron stars—the burnt-out cores of massive stars that exploded. Three such ULXs have been identified as neutron stars so far.
Astronomers measure temperature at which brown dwarfs go from cloudy to cloudless
’Revolutionary’ observations suggest the first stars appeared 180m years after the big bang – and may hold information on dark matter
A new explanation for the Moon's origin has it forming inside the Earth when our planet was a seething, spinning cloud of vaporized rock, called a synestia. The new model led by researchers at the University of California, Davis and Harvard University resolves several problems in lunar formation and is published Feb. 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets.
Each of the telescopes can be operated remotely and do not require a human operator. They are capable of viewing the moon, the Orion Nebula or nearby planets and are even powerful enough to snap a picture of other galaxies.
(Abstract)An understanding of the long-term evolution of self-gravitating discs ranks among the classic outstanding problems of astrophysics. In this work, we show that the secular inclination dynamics of a geometrically thin quasi-Keplerian disc, with a surface density profile that scales as the inverse square-root of the orbital radius, are described by the time-dependent Schrodinger equation. Within the context of this formalism, nodal bending waves correspond to the eigenmodes of a quasi-particle’s wavefunction, confined in an infinite square well with boundaries given by the radial extent of the disc. We further show that external secular perturbations upon self-gravitating discs exhibit a mathematical similarity to quantum scattering theory. Employing this framework, we derive an analytic criterion for the gravitational rigidity of a nearly-Keplerian disc under external perturbations. Applications of the theory to circumstellar discs and Galactic nuclei are discussed.
The Schrödinger Equation makes an unlikely appearance at the astronomical scaleQuantum mechanics is the branch of physics governing the sometimes-strange behavior of the tiny particles that make up our universe. Equations describing the quantum world are generally confined to the subatomic realm—the mathematics relevant at very small scales is not relevant at larger scales, and vice versa. However, a surprising new discovery from a Caltech researcher suggests that the Schrödinger Equation—the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics—is remarkably useful in describing the long-term evolution of certain astronomical structures.