Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

XMM-Newton X-ray Space Telescope


Waspie_Dwarf

Recommended Posts

XMM-Newton reveals a tumbling neutron star


user posted image
This XMM-Newton X-ray image shows the portion of the sky around the pulsar named
'RX J0720.4-3125', which is the central bright object appearing in red.

This spinning star has been observed by XMM-Newton over a few years, and has shown
an unexpected variation in the observed thermal emission. According to astronomers,
this effect is not due to a real variation in temperature, but instead to a changing viewing
geometry. The pulsar is most probably a slowly tumbling star, which exposes different
areas of the surface over time.

Credits: ESA/MPE


19 April 2006
Using data from ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, an international group of astrophysicists discovered that one spinning neutron star doesn’t appear to be the stable rotator scientists would expect. These X-ray observations promise to give new insights into the thermal evolution and finally the interior structure of neutron stars.

Spinning neutron stars, also known as pulsars, are generally known to be highly stable rotators. Thanks to their periodic signals, emitted either in the radio or in the X-ray wavelength, they can serve as very accurate astronomical ‘clocks’.
The scientists found that over the past four and a half years the temperature of one enigmatic object, named RX J0720.4-3125, kept rising. However, very recent observations have shown that this trend reversed and the temperature is now decreasing.

According to the scientists this effect is not due to a real variation in temperature, but instead to a changing viewing geometry. RX J0720.4-3125 is most probably ‘precessing’, that is it is slowly tumbling and therefore, over time, it exposes to the observers different areas of the surface.

Neutron stars are one of the endpoints of stellar evolution. With a mass comparable to that of our Sun confined into a sphere of 20-40 km diameter, their density is even somewhat higher than that of an atomic nucleus - a billion tonnes per cubic centimetre. Soon after their birth in a supernova explosion their temperature is of the order of 1 000 000 ºC and the bulk of their thermal emission falls in the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Young isolated neutron stars are slowly cooling down and it takes a million years before they become too cold to be observable in X-rays.

Neutron stars are known to possess very strong magnetic fields, typically several trillion times stronger than that of the Earth. The magnetic field can be so strong that it influences the heat transport from the stellar interior through the crust leading to hot spots around the magnetic poles on the star surface.

It is the emission from these hotter polar caps which dominates the X-ray spectrum. There are only a few isolated neutron stars known from which we can directly observe the thermal emission from the surface of the star. One of them is RX J0720.4-3125, rotating with a period of about eight and a half seconds. “Given the long cooling time scale it was therefore highly unexpected to see its X-ray spectrum changing over a couple of years,” said Frank Haberl from the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching (Germany), who led the research group.

“It is very unlikely that the global temperature of the neutron star changes that quickly. We are rather seeing different areas of the stellar surface at different times. This is also observed during the rotation period of the neutron star when the hot spots are moving in and out of our line of sight, and so their contribution to the total emission changes,” Haberl continued.

A similar effect on a much longer time scale can be observed when the neutron star precesses (similarly to a spinning top). In that case the rotation axis itself moves around a cone leading to a slow change of the viewing geometry over the years. Free precession can be caused by a slight deformation of the star from a perfect sphere, which may have its origin in the very strong magnetic field.

During the first XMM-Newton observation of RX J0720.4-3125 in May 2000, the observed temperature was at minimum and the cooler, larger spot was predominantly visible. On the other hand, four years later (May 2004) the precession brought into view mostly the second, hotter and smaller spot, that made the observed temperature increase. This likely explains the observed variation in temperature and emitting areas, and their anti-correlation.
In their work Haberl and colleagues developed a model for RX J0720.4-3125 which can explain many of the peculiar characteristics which have been a challenge to explain so far. In this model the long-term change in temperature is produced by the different fractions of the two hot polar caps which enter into view as the star precesses with a period of about seven to eight years.

In order for such a model to work, the two emitting polar regions need to have different temperatures and sizes, as it has been recently proposed in the case of another member of the same class of isolated neutron stars.

According to the team, RX J0720.4-3125 is probably the best case to study precession of a neutron star via its X-ray emission directly visible from the stellar surface. Precession may be a powerful tool to probe the neutron star interior and learn about the state of matter under conditions which we can not produce in the laboratory.

Additional XMM-Newton observations are planned to further monitor this intriguing object. “We are continuing the theoretical modelling from which we hope to learn more about the thermal evolution, the magnetic field geometry of this particular star and the interior structure of neutron stars in general,” Haberl concluded.


Note:

These results will appear in an article in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (astro-ph/0603724). The article, “Evidence for precession of the isolated neutron star RX J0720.4-3125”, is by Frank Haberl (Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany), Roberto Turolla (University of Padua, Italy), Cor P. De Vries (SRON, Utrecht, The Netherlands), Silvia Zane (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, UK), Jacco Vink (University Utrecht, The Netherlands), Mariano Méndez (SRON, Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Frank Verbunt (University Utrecht, The Netherlands).


Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Replies 32
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Waspie_Dwarf

    23

  • frogfish

    3

  • Lilly

    1

  • Roj47

    1

XMM-Newton digs into the secrets of fossil galaxy clusters

user posted image

XMM-Newton observations of the fossil galaxy cluster RX J1416.5+2315, show a cloud of hot gas emitting X-rays (in blue). The cloud, reaching temperatures of about 50 million degrees, extend over 3.5 million light years and surround a giant elliptical galaxy believed to have grown to its present size by cannibalising its neighbours.

Credits: Khosroshahi, Maughan, Ponman, Jones, ESA, ING


27 April 2006
Taking advantage of the high sensitivity of ESA's XMM-Newton and the sharp vision of NASA's Chandra X-Ray space observatories, astronomers have studied the behaviour of massive fossil galaxy clusters, trying to find out how they find the time to form…

Many galaxies reside in galaxy groups, where they experience close encounters with their neighbours and interact gravitationally with the dark matter - mass which permeates the whole intergalactic space but is not directly visible because it doesn’t emit radiation.
These interactions cause large galaxies to spiral slowly towards the centre of the group, where they can merge to form a single giant central galaxy, which progressively swallows all its neighbours.

If this process runs to completion, and no new galaxies fall into the group, then the result is an object dubbed a 'fossil group', in which almost all the stars are collected into a single giant galaxy, which sits at the centre of a group-sized dark matter halo. The presence of this halo can be inferred from the presence of extensive hot gas, which fills the gravitational potential wells of many groups and emits X-rays.

A group of international astronomers studied in detail the physical features of the most massive and hot known fossil group, with the main aim to solve a puzzle and understand the formation of massive fossils. In fact, according to simple theoretical models, they simply could not have formed in the time available to them!

The fossil group investigated, called 'RX J1416.4+2315', is dominated by a single elliptical galaxy located one and a half thousand million light years away from us, and it is 500 thousand million times more luminous than the Sun.

The XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray observations, combined with optical and infrared analyses, revealed that group sits within a hot gas halo extending over three million light years and heated to a temperature of 50 million degrees, mainly due to shock heating as a result of gravitational collapse.

Such a high temperature, about as twice as the previously estimated values, is usually characteristic of galaxy clusters. Another interesting feature of the whole cluster system is its large mass, reaching over 300 trillion solar masses. Only about two percent of it in the form of stars in galaxies, and 15 percent in the form of hot gas emitting X-rays. The major contributor to the mass of the system is the invisible dark matter, which gravitationally binds the other components.

user posted image

The XMM-Newton spacecraft is the biggest science satellite ever built in Europe. Its telescope mirrors are the most powerful developed so far and, with its sensitive detectors, it sees much more than any previous X-ray satellite.

According to calculations, a fossil cluster as massive as RX J1416.4+2315 would have not had the time to form during the whole age of the universe. The key process in the formation of such fossil groups is the process known as 'dynamical friction', whereby a large galaxy loses its orbital energy to the surrounding dark matter. This process is less effective when galaxies are moving more quickly, which they do in massive 'clusters' of galaxies.

This, in principle, sets an upper limit to the size and mass of fossil groups. The exact limits are, however, still unknown since the geometry and mass distribution of groups may differ from that assumed in simple theoretical models.

“Simple models to describe the dynamical friction assume that the merging galaxies move along circular orbits around the centre of the cluster mass“, says Habib Khosroshahi from the University of Birmingham (UK), first author of the results. “Instead, if we assume that galaxies fall towards the centre of the developing cluster in an asymmetric way, such as along a filament, the dynamic friction and so the cluster formation process may occur in a shorter time scale,” he continues. Such a hypothesis is supported by the highly elongated X-ray emission we observed in RX J1416.4+2315, to sustain the idea of a collapse along a dominant filament.”

The optical brightness of the central dominant galaxy in this fossil is similar to that of brightest galaxies in large clusters (called 'BCGs'). According to the astronomers, this implies that such galaxies could have originated in fossil groups around which the cluster builds up later. This offers an alternative mechanism for the formation of BCGs compared to the existing scenarios in which BCGs form within clusters during or after the cluster collapse.

“The study of massive fossil groups such as RX J1416.4+2315 is important to test our understanding of the formation of structure in the universe,” adds Khosroshahi. “Cosmological simulations are underway which attempt to reproduce the properties we observe, in order to understand how these extreme systems develop,” he concludes.


Note:

The XMM-Newton observations of the fossil galaxy cluster RX J1416.4+2315 were performed in July 2003. Chandra’s observations of the same object where made in September 2001.

The findings will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (astro-ph/0603606). The article, titled “A fossil galaxy cluster; an X-ray and optical study of RX J1416.4+2315”, is by Habib G. Khosroshahi, Trevor J. Ponman and Laurence R. Jones (School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Birmingham, UK), Ben J. Maughan († Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA).

Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

XMM-Newton 'spare-time' provides impressive sky survey

user posted image

In its on-going slew survey of the sky, XMM-Newton is able to map with high efficiency very large sky features. Among these, is the 20 000 year-old Vela supernova remnant (right) - occupying a sky area 150 times larger than the full moon. This object is compared here with an image previously taken by the former ROSAT mission (left).

Credits: ESA/ROSAT


3 May 2006
For the past four years, while ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has been slewing between different targets ready for the next observation, it has kept its cameras open and used this spare time to quietly look at the heavens. The result is a 'free-of-charge' mission spin-off – a survey that has now covered an impressive 25 percent of the sky.

The rapid slewing of the satellite across the sky means that a star or a galaxy passes in the field of view of the telescope for ten seconds only. However, the great collecting area of the XMM-Newton mirrors, coupled with the efficiency of its image sensors, is allowing thousands of sources to be detected.
Furthermore, XMM-Newton can pinpoint the position of X-rays coming from the sky with a resolution far superior to that available for most previous all-sky surveys. This is sufficient to allow the source of these X-rays to be found in many cases.

By comparing XMM-Newton survey’s data with those obtained over a decade ago by the international ROSAT mission, which also performed an all-sky survey, scientists can now check the long-term stability, or the evolution, of about two thousand objects in the sky.

An initial look shows that some sources have changed their brightness level by an incredible amount. The most extreme of these are variable stars and more surprisingly galaxies, whose unusual volatility may be due to large quantities of matter being consumed by an otherwise dormant central black hole.

The slew survey is particularly sensitive to active galactic nuclei (AGN) - galaxies with an unusually bright nucleus – which can be traced out to a distance of ten thousand million light years.

While most stars and galaxies look like points in the sky, about 15 percent of the sources catalogued by XMM-Newton have an extended X-ray emission. Most of these are clusters of galaxies - gigantic conglomerations of galaxies which trap hot gas that emit X-rays over scales of a million light years.

Eighty-one of these clusters are already famous from earlier work but many other clusters, previously unknown, appear in this new XMM-Newton sky catalogue.

Scientists hope that the newly detected sources of this kind also include very distant clusters which are highly luminous in X-rays, as these objects are invaluable for investigating the evolution of the Universe. Follow-up observations by large optical telescopes are now needed to determine the distances of the individual galaxies in the newly discovered clusters.

An initial look shows that some sources have changed their brightness level by an incredible amount. The most extreme of these are variable stars and more surprisingly galaxies, whose unusual volatility may be due to large quantities of matter being consumed by an otherwise dormant central black hole.

The slew survey is particularly sensitive to active galactic nuclei (AGN) - galaxies with an unusually bright nucleus – which can be traced out to a distance of ten thousand million light years.

While most stars and galaxies look like points in the sky, about 15 percent of the sources catalogued by XMM-Newton have an extended X-ray emission. Most of these are clusters of galaxies - gigantic conglomerations of galaxies which trap hot gas that emit X-rays over scales of a million light years.

user posted image

Eighty-one galaxy clusters – objects that make extended X-ray emissions - are know from former sky surveys (see image). Previously unknown sources of these kind are now being catalogued thanks to XMM-Newton's slew sky survey.
Studying these objects, especially when highly luminous, is very important to investigate the evolution of the Universe.

Credits: ESA and the XMM-Newton EPIC consortium


Eighty-one of these clusters are already famous from earlier work but many other clusters, previously unknown, appear in this new XMM-Newton sky catalogue.
Scientists hope that the newly detected sources of this kind also include very distant clusters which are highly luminous in X-rays, as these objects are invaluable for investigating the evolution of the Universe. Follow-up observations by large optical telescopes are now needed to determine the distances of the individual galaxies in the newly discovered clusters.

Using traditional pointed observations, it takes huge amounts of telescope-time to image very large sky features, such as old supernova remnants, in their entirety. The slewing mechanism provides a very efficient method of mapping these objects, and several have been imaged including the 20 000 year-old Vela supernova remnant, which occupies a sky area 150 times larger than the full moon.

Extraordinarily bright, low-mass X-ray binary systems of stars (called 'LMXB') – either powered by matter pulled from a normal star, or exploding onto the surface of a neutron star, or being consumed by a black hole - are observed with sufficient sensitivity to record their detailed light spectrum. Passes across these huge X-ray sources can help astronomers to understand the long-term physics of the interaction between the two stars of the binary system.

Many areas of astronomy are expected to be influenced by the XMM-Newton sky survey. Today, 3 May 2006, the XMM-Newton scientist have released a part of the catalogue resulting from the initial processing of the highest quality data obtained so far.

Such data correspond to a sky coverage of about 15 percent, and include more than 2700 very bright sources and a further 2000 sources of lower significance. Currently, about 55 percent of the catalogue entries have been identified with known stars, galaxies, quasars and clusters of galaxies.

A faster turn-around of slew-data processing is now planned to catch interesting transient (or temporary) targets in the act, before they have a chance to fade. This will give access to rare, energetic events, which only a sensitive wide-angle survey such as XMM-Newton’s can achieve.

It is planned to continually update the catalogue as XMM-Newton charts its way through the stars. This will cover at least 80 percent of the sky, leaving a tremendous legacy for the future.

Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

XMM-Newton reveals the origin of elements in galaxy clusters

user posted image

These X-ray images of the clusters of galaxies ‘Sersic 159-03’(right) and ‘2A 0335+096’ (left) were taken by the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) on-board ESA’s XMM-Newton, in November 2002 and August 2003 respectively. Thanks to these observations, astronomers could determine the abundances of nine chemical elements in the clusters ‘plasma’ – a gas containing charged particles such as ions and electrons. These elements include oxygen, iron, neon, magnesium, silicon, argon, calcium, nickel, and - detected for the first time ever in a galaxy cluster - chromium. The distribution of silicon (produced by ‘type Ia’ and ‘core collapse’ supernova types) relative to iron (mainly produced by ‘type Ia’ supernovae) in these two clusters is very different, showing that they had a different evolution.

Credits: ESA and the XMM-Newton EPIC consortium


10 May 2006
Deep observations of two X-ray bright clusters of galaxies with ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite allowed a group of international astronomers to measure their chemical composition with an unprecedented accuracy. Knowing the chemical composition of galaxy clusters is of crucial importance to understanding the origin of chemical elements in the Universe.

Clusters, or conglomerates, of galaxies are the largest objects in the Universe. By looking at them through optical telescopes it is possible to see hundreds or even thousands of galaxies occupying a volume a few million light years across. However, such telescopes only reveal the tip of the iceberg. In fact most of the atoms in galaxy clusters are in the form of hot gas emitting X-ray radiation, with the mass of the hot gas five times larger than the mass in the cluster’s galaxies themselves.
Most of the chemical elements produced in the stars of galaxy clusters - expelled into the surrounding space by supernova explosions and by stellar winds - become part of the hot X-ray emitting gas. Astronomers divide supernovae into two basic types: ‘core collapse’ and ‘Type Ia’ supernovae. The ‘core collapse’ supernovae originate when a star at the end of its life collapses into a neutron star or a black hole. These supernovae produce lots of oxygen, neon and magnesium. The Type Ia supernovae explode when a white dwarf star consuming matter from a companion star becomes too massive and completely disintegrates. This type produces lots of iron and nickel.

Respectively in November 2002 and August 2003, and for one and a half day each time, XMM-Newton’s made deep observations of the two galaxy clusters called ‘Sersic 159-03’ and ‘2A 0335+096’. Thanks to these data the astronomers could determine the abundances of nine chemical elements in the clusters ‘plasma’ – a gas containing charged particles such as ions and electrons.

These elements include oxygen, iron, neon, magnesium, silicon, argon, calcium, nickel, and - detected for the first time ever in a galaxy cluster - chromium. "Comparing the abundances of the detected elements to the yields of supernovae calculated theoretically, we found that about 30 percent of the supernovae in these clusters were exploding white dwarfs (‘Type Ia’) and the rest were collapsing stars at the end of their lives (‘core collapse’)," said Norbert Werner, from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research (Utrecht, Netherlands) and one of the lead authors of these results.


"This number is in between the value found for our own Galaxy (where Type Ia supernovae represent about 13 percent of the supernovae ‘population’) and the current frequency of supernovae events as determined by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search project (according to which about 42 percent of all observed supernovae are Type Ia)," he continued.

The astronomers also found that all supernova models predict much less calcium than what is observed in clusters and that the observed nickel abundance cannot be reproduced by these models. These discrepancies indicate that that the details of supernova enrichment is not yet clearly understood. Since clusters of galaxies are believed to be fair samples of the Universe, their X-ray spectroscopy can help to improve the supernova models.

The spatial distribution of elements across a cluster also holds information about the history of clusters themselves. The distribution of elements in 2A 0335+096 indicates an ongoing merger. The distribution of oxygen and iron across Sersic 159-03 indicates that while most of the enrichment by the core collapse supernovae happened long time ago, Type Ia supernovae still continue to enrich the hot gas by heavy elements especially in the core of the cluster.


Note

This work is presented in two papers in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal. The first one, published in April 2006 and titled ‘XMM-Newton spectroscopy of the cluster of galaxies 2A 035+096’ (A&A Volume 449, Page 475), is by N.Werner , J.S.Kaastra and J.A.M.Bleeker (SRON, Utrecht, The Netherlands), J.de Plaa and J.Vink (SRON and Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands), T.Tamura (JAXA, Kanagawa, Japan), J.R.Peterson (Stanford University, CA, USA), F.Verbunt (Utrecht University, The Netherlands).

The second article, to appear in 2006 and titled ‘Chemical evolution in Sersic 159-03 observed by XMM-Newton’ (A&A 2006 and astro-ph/0602582), is by J.de Plaa, J.Vink and J.A.M.Bleeker (SRON and Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands), N.Werner, J.S.Kaastra and M.Mendez (SRON, Utrecht, The Netherlands), A.M.Bykov (A.F. Ioffe Institute for Physics and Technology, St.Petersburg, Russia), M.Bonamente (University of Alabama, Hunstville, AL, USA), J.R. Peterson (Stanford University, CA, USA).

This research is in particular the result of the cooperation between the SRON Utrecht and the Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
XMM-Newton spots the greatest of great balls of fire

user posted image

This X-ray image shows a comet-like blob of gas about 5 million light-years long hurling through a distant galaxy cluster at nearly 1 000 kilometres per second. The 'comet' is confined to the orange regions in this image. The head is the lower right, with reddish areas. The tail fans outward because there is less pressure to confine it. The colour red refers to regions of lower entropy, a thermodynamical measure of disorder. The orange regions have higher entropy.
This entropy map, different from brightness or temperature, helps scientists separate the cold and dense gas of the 'comet' from the hotter and more rarefied gas of the cluster. The data show with remarkable detail the process of gas being stripped from the comet's core (entropy goes up) and forming a large tail containing lumps of colder and denser gas. The 'comet' itself is a low-entropy gas; the ambient medium is a high entropy gas; the core of the comet has even lower entropy. The researchers estimate that a sun's worth of mass is lost every hour.

Credits: University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)


12 June 2006
Thanks to data from ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite, a team of international scientists found a comet-like ball of gas over a thousand million times the mass of the sun hurling through a distant galaxy cluster over 750 kilometres per second.

This colossal 'ball of fire' is by far the largest object of this kind ever identified.
The gas ball is about three million light years across, or about five thousand million times the size of our solar system. It appears from our perspective as a circular X-ray glow with a comet-like tail nearly half the size of the moon.

"The size and velocity of this gas ball is truly fantastic," said Dr Alexis Finoguenov, adjunct assistant professor of physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and an associated scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. "This is likely a massive building block being delivered to one of the largest assembly of galaxies we know."

The gas ball is in a galaxy cluster called Abell 3266, millions of light years from Earth, thus posing absolutely no danger to our solar system. Abell 3266 contains hundreds of galaxies and great amounts of hot gas that is nearly a hundred million degrees. Both the cluster gas and the giant gas ball are held together by the gravitational attraction of unseen dark matter.

"What interests astronomers is not just the size of the gas ball but the role it plays in the formation and evolution of structure in the universe," said Dr Francesco Miniati, who worked on this data at UMBC while visiting from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.

Abell cluster 3266 is part of the Horologium-Reticulum super-cluster and is one of the most massive galaxy clusters in the southern sky. It is still actively growing in size, as indicated by the gas ball, and will become one of the largest mass concentrations in the nearby universe.


Using XMM-Newton data, the science team produced an entropy map (entropy is a thermodynamical property that provides a measure of disorder). The map allows for the separation of the cold and dense gas of the comet from the hotter and more rarefied gas of the cluster. This is based on X-ray spectra. The data show with remarkable detail the process of gas being stripped from the comet's core and forming a large tail containing lumps of colder and denser gas. The researchers estimate that a sun's worth of mass is lost every hour.

"In Abell 3266 we are seeing structure formation in action," said Prof. Mark Henriksen (UMBC), co-author of the results. "Dark matter is the gravitational glue holding the gas ball together. But as it races through the galaxy cluster, a tug-of-war ensues where the galaxy cluster eventually wins, stripping off and dispersing gas that perhaps one day will seed star and galaxy growth within the cluster."


Note

The findings, resulting from a research effort led by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, appear in the 1 June 2006 issue of the Astrophysical Journal (volume 643, page 790).

The European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray mission was launched in December 1999. With its powerful mirrors, it is helping to solve many mysteries about the most energetic phenomena taking place in the Universe.

Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
Supernova leaves behind mysterious object

user posted image

This image, obtained thanks to ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray telescope on 23 August 2005, shows the aftermath of a 2000-year-old star explosion. In the heart of the central blue dot in this image, smaller than a pinpoint, likely lies a neutron star only about 20 kilometers across. The nature of this object is like nothing detected before.
Scientists from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Milan have detected unusual X-ray pulsations. Understanding the central source's true nature will lead to new insights about supernovae, neutron stars and their evolution.

Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton/A.De Luca (INAF-IASF )


6 May 2006
Thanks to data from ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite, a team of scientists taking a closer look at an object discovered over 25 years ago have found that it is like none other known in our galaxy.

The object is in the heart of supernova remnant RCW103, the gaseous remains of a star that exploded about 2 000 years ago. Taken at face value, RCW103 and its central source would appear to be a textbook example of what is left behind after a supernova explosion: a bubble of ejected material and a neutron star.
A deep, continuous 24.5-hour observation has revealed something far more complex and intriguing, however. The team, from the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica (IASF) of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Milan, Italy, has found that the emission from the central source varies with a cycle that repeats itself every 6.7 hours. This is an astonishingly long period, tens of thousands of times longer than expected for a young neutron star. Also, the object's spectral and temporal properties differ from an earlier XMM-Newton observation of this very source in 2001.

"The behaviour we see is especially puzzling in view of its young age, less than 2 000 years," said Andrea De Luca of IASF-INAF, the lead author. "It is reminiscent of a multimillion-year-old source. For years we have had a sense that the object is different, but we never knew how different until now."

The object is called 1E161348-5055, which the scientists have conveniently nicknamed 1E (where E stands for Einstein Observatory which discovered the source). It is embedded nearly perfectly in the centre of RCW 103, about 10 000 light years away in the constellation Norma. The near-perfect alignment of 1E in the centre of RCW 103 leaves astronomers rather confident that the two were born in the same catastrophic event.

When a star at least eight times more massive than our sun runs out of fuel to burn, it explodes in an event called a supernova. The stellar core implodes, forming a dense nugget called a neutron star or, if there's enough mass, a black hole. A neutron star contains about a sun's worth of mass crammed into a sphere only about 20 kilometres across.

Scientists have searched for years for 1E's periodicity in order to learn more about its properties, such as how fast it is spinning or whether it has a companion.

"Our clear detection of such a long period together with secular variability in X-ray emission makes for a very weird source," said Patrizia Caraveo of INAF, a co-author and leader of the Milano Group. "Such properties in a 2000-year-old compact object leave us with two probable scenarios, essentially a source that is accretion-powered or magnetic-field-powered."

user posted image

In August 2005, ESA's XMM-Newton observed the centre (blue dot in the image) of the supernova remnant RCW103 - the aftermath of a 2000-year-old star explosion.
The light curve on the right of the image unambiguously shows X-ray pulsation with a period of 6.67 hours - an astonishingly long period for the young neutron star expected to lie there.

The puzzling nature of this object (1E161348-5055), reminiscent of a multimillion-year-old source, is like nothing detected before.

Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton/A.De Luca (INAF-IASF )


1E could be an isolated magnetar, an exotic subclass of highly magnetized neutron stars. Here, the magnetic field lines act as brakes for the spinning star, liberating energy. About a dozen magnetars are known. But magnetars usually spin several times per minute. If 1E is spinning only once every 6.67 hours, as the period detection indicates, the magnetic field needed to slow the neutron star in just 2000 years would be too big to be plausible.
A standard magnetar magnetic field could do the trick, however, if a debris disk, formed by leftover material of the exploded star, is also helping to slow down the neutron star spin. This scenario has never been observed before and would point to a new type of neutron star evolution.

Alternatively, the long 6.67-hour period could be the orbital period of a binary system. Such a picture requires that a low-mass normal star managed to remain bound to the compact object generated by the supernova explosion 2000 year ago. Observations do allow for a companion of half the mass of our Sun, or even smaller.


But 1E would be an unprecedented example of a low-mass X-ray binary system in its infancy, a million times younger than standard X-ray binary systems with light companions. Young age is not the only peculiarity of 1E. The source's cyclic pattern is far more pronounced than that observed for dozens of low-mass X-ray binary systems calling for some unusual neutron star feeding process.

A double accretion process could explain its behaviour: The compact object captures a fraction of the dwarf star's wind (wind accretion), but it is also able to pull out gas from the outer layers of its companion, which settles in an accretion disc (disc accretion). Such an unusual mechanism could be at work in an early phase of the life of a low-mass X-ray binary, dominated by the effects of the initial, expected, orbital eccentricity.

"RCW 103 is an enigma," said Giovanni Bignami, director of CESR,Toulouse, and co-author. "We simply don't have a conclusive answer to what is causing the long X-ray cycles. When we do figure this out, we're going to learn a lot more about supernovae, neutron stars and their evolution."

Had the star exploded in the northern sky, Cleopatra could have seen it and considered it to be an omen of her unhappy end, Caraveo said. Instead the explosion took place deep in the southern sky, and no one recorded it. Nevertheless, the source is a good omen for X-ray astronomers hoping to learn about stellar evolution.


Note

The findings appear on the 6 July 2006 issue of Science Express. The article, titled "A long-period, violently-variable X-ray source in a young SNR", is by A. De Luca, P.A. Caraveo, S. Mereghetti and A. Tiengo (INAF-IASF Milano, Italy), and G.F. Bignami (CESR, CNRS-UPS, Toulouse, France, and Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy).

The authors work builds upon observations by Gordon Garmire of Pennsylvania State University and Eric Gotthelf of Columbia University who have studied the source with Einstein, ROSAT, ASCA and Chandra and already found hints of a long period.

Source: ESA - News

Edit: Oops! I put the same image in twice. Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could it be a magnetar?

EDIT: Nevermind..it says in the second article...

Edited by frogfish
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could it be a magnetar?

EDIT: Nevermind..it says in the second article...

If a magnetar passed within 6 light years and if it was only 10 to 20 kilometers wide it could rip the atmosphere from our planet. A threat I wouldn't take lightly as one the just recently passed within 20,000 light years actually effected our planet. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A threat I wouldn't take lightly as one the just recently passed within 20,000 light years actually effected our planet.

Never heard of this? Do you have a link?

Edited by frogfish
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A threat I wouldn't take lightly as one the just recently passed within 20,000 light years actually effected our planet. :)

I can't find anything about that.

I did however find this:

Known Magnetars

* SGR 1806-20, located 50,000 light-years from Earth on the far side of our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius.

* 1E 1048.1-5937, located 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The original star, out of which the magnetar formed, had a mass 30 to 40 times that of the Sun.

So, if this alleged magnetar 20,000 light years away affected our planet, is this one 9,000 away also affecting it? Or are you just plain wrong?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If a magnetar passed within 6 light years and if it was only 10 to 20 kilometers wide it could rip the atmosphere from our planet. A threat I wouldn't take lightly as one the just recently passed within 20,000 light years actually effected our planet. :)

Only heard of a Magnetar when this link began, but here are some possibilities I have found -

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/brig...ash_050218.html

http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2005/0218.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah yes, the dreaded Gamma Ray Bursts!

The scientists calculated that gamma-ray radiation from a relatively nearby star explosion, hitting the Earth for only ten seconds, could deplete up to half of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. Recovery could take at least five years. With the ozone layer damaged, ultraviolet radiation from the Sun could kill much of the life on land and near the surface of oceans and lakes, disrupting the food chain. While gamma-ray bursts in our Milky Way galaxy are indeed rare, NASA scientists estimate that at least one nearby event probably hit the Earth in the past billion years. Life on Earth is thought to have appeared at least 3.5 billion years ago. Dr. Bruce Lieberman, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, originated the idea that a gamma-ray burst specifically could have caused the great Ordovician extinction. "We don't know exactly when one came, but we're rather sure it did come - and left its mark. What's most surprising is that just a 10-second burst can cause years of devastating ozone damage."

10 seconds...and *zap* the game's all over.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Old pulsars still have new tricks to teach us


user posted image
An artists impression of the 'luminescent' magnetosphere surrounding a pulsar. The pulsar itself is invisible in this view and sits at the very centre of the image. Above the pulsar's magnetic poles, charged particles are accelerated outwards along the magnetic field lines and produce intense beamed radiation that can be observed by XMM-Newton.

Credits: W.Becker/Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik


26 July 2006
The super-sensitivity of ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has shown that the prevailing theory of how stellar corpses, known as pulsars, generate their X-rays needs revising. In particular, the energy needed to generate the million-degree polar hotspots seen on cooling neutron stars may come predominately from inside the pulsar, not from outside.

Thirty-nine years ago, Cambridge astronomers Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and Anthony Hewish discovered the pulsars. These celestial objects are the strongly magnetised spinning cores of dead stars, each one just 20 kilometres across yet containing approximately 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. Even today, they perplex astronomers across the world.
"The theory of how pulsars emit their radiation is still in its infancy, even after nearly forty years of work," says Werner Becker, Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany. There are many models but no accepted theory. Now, thanks to new XMM-Newton observations, Becker and colleagues may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle that will help theorists explain why cooling neutron stars have hotspots at their polar regions.

Neutron stars are formed with temperatures of more than billion (1012 K) degrees during the collapse of massive stars. As soon as they are born they begin to cool down. How they cool must depend on the physical properties of the superdense matter inside them.

Observations with previous X-ray satellites have shown that the X-rays from cooling neutron stars come from three regions of the pulsar. Firstly, the whole surface is so hot that it emits X-rays. Secondly, there are charged particles in the pulsar’s magnetic surroundings that also emit X-rays as they move outwards, along the magnetic field lines. Thirdly, and crucially for this latest investigation, younger pulsars show X-ray hotspots at their poles.

Until now, astronomers believed that hotspots are produced when the charged particles collide with the pulsar's surface at the poles. However, the latest XMM-Newton results have cast doubt on this view.

user posted image
The faint pulsar PSR B1929+10 captured by the unrivalled sensitivity of ESA’s XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray observatory. It is speeding through space in the direction of the arrow at a speed of 177 kilometres per second. At this speed, the pulsar leaves a trail of X-ray emitting electron plasma stretching across space.

Credits: W.Becker/Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik


XMM-Newton captured detailed views of the X-ray emission from five pulsars, each of which was up to several million years old. "No other X-ray satellite can do this work. Only XMM-Newton is capable of observing details of their X-ray emission," says Becker. He and his collaborators found no evidence of surface emission, nor of polar hotspots, although they did see emission from the outwardly moving particles.

The lack of surface emission is no surprise. In the several million years since their birth these pulsars have cooled from billions of degrees to much less than 500 000 degrees Celsius, meaning that their surface-wide X-ray emission has faded from view.

However, the lack of the polar hotspots in old pulsars is a big surprise and shows that the heating of the polar surface regions by particle bombardment is not efficient enough to produce a significant thermal X-ray component. "In the case of three-million-year-old pulsar PSR B1929+10 the contribution from any heated polar region is less than seven percent of the total detected X-ray flux," says Becker.

It seems that the conventional view is not the only way to look at the problem. An alternative theory is that the heat trapped in the pulsar since its birth will be guided to the poles by the intense magnetic field within the pulsar. This is because the heat is carried on electrons, which are electrically charged and so will be directed by magnetic fields.

This means that the polar hot spots in younger pulsars are produced predominantly from heat within the pulsar, rather than from the collision of particles from outside the pulsar. They will therefore fade from view in the same way as the surface-wide emission. "This view is still under discussion but is very much supported by the new XMM-Newton observations," says Becker.

Nearly forty years since the discovery of pulsars, it seems that old pulsars still have new tricks to teach astronomers.

Note:

The findings appear in an article titled 'A Multiwavelength study of the Pulsar PSR B1929+10 and its X-ray trail' by Werner Becker et al., published in The Astrophysical Journal on 10 July 2006 (vol. 645, pp 1421). Previous papers in this study are:

'Revealing the X-Ray Emission Processes of Old Rotation-powered Pulsars: XMM-Newton Observations of PSR B0950+08, PSR B0823+26, and PSR J2043+2740', by Becker, et al., 2004 (ApJ, 615, 908),

'A Multiwavelength Study of PSR B0628-28: The First Overluminous Rotation-powered Pulsar?', by Becker, et al., 2005, (ApJ, 633, 367).


Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...
Black hole boldly goes where no black hole has gone before


linked-image
Black holes are, by definition, invisible. But the region around them can flare up
periodically when the black hole feeds. As gas falls into a black hole, it will heat to high
temperatures and radiate brightly, particularly in X-rays.

Thanks to ESA’s XMM-Newton data, astronomers found one stellar-mass black hole by
chance feeding in a globular star cluster in a galaxy named NGC 4472 (or M49), about
fifty million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster.

Credits: ESA, NASA and Felix Mirabel


3 January 2007
Astronomers have found a black hole where few thought they could ever exist, inside a globular star cluster. The finding has broad implications for the dynamics of stars clusters and also for the existence of a still-speculative new class of black holes called 'intermediate-mass' black holes.

The discovery is reported in the current issue of Nature. Tom Maccarone of the University of Southampton in England leads an international team on the finding, made primarily with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite.

Globular clusters are dense bundles of thousands to millions of old stars, and many scientists have doubted that black holes could survive in such an exclusive environment. Computer simulations show that a newly formed black hole would first sink towards the centre of the cluster but quickly get gravitationally slingshot out entirely when interacting with the cluster's myriad stars.


The new finding provides the first convincing evidence that some black hole might not only survive but grow and flourish in globular clusters. What has astonished astronomers is how quickly the black hole was found.

linked-image
Globular clusters are dense bundles of thousands to millions of old stars, and many
scientists have doubted that black holes could survive in such an exclusive environment.

Computer simulations show that a newly formed black hole would first sink towards the
centre of the cluster but quickly get gravitationally slingshot out entirely when interacting
with the cluster's myriad stars.

New XMM-Newton findings provided the first convincing evidence that some black hole
might not only survive but grow and flourish in globular clusters.

Credits: ESA/Hubble


"We were preparing for a long, systematic search of thousands of globular clusters with the hope of finding just one black hole," said Maccarone. "But bingo, we found one as soon as we started the search. It was only the second globular cluster we looked at."

The search continues to find more, Maccarone said, yet only one black hole was needed to resolve the decades-old discussion about black holes and globular clusters.

Scientists say there are two main classes of black holes. Supermassive black holes containing the mass of millions to billions of suns are found in the core of most galaxies, including our own. A quasar is one kind of supermassive black hole. Stellar-size black holes contain the mass of about ten suns. These are created from the collapsed core of massive stars. Our galaxy likely contains millions of these black holes.

linked-image
Astronomers using XMM-Newton data found that the elliptical galaxy (named NGC 4472
or M49) shown in this image hosts a stellar-mass black hole in the act of feeding. This
black hole is the first ever found in a globular star cluster.

The galaxy is situated about fifty million light-years away in the constellation Virgo,
one of the many members of the Virgo galaxy cluster. This image was taken in
December 1996 at the KPNO 0.9-metre telescope.

Credits: NOAO/AURA/NSF


Black holes are, by definition, invisible. But the region around them can flare up periodically when the black hole feeds. As gas falls into a black hole, it will heat to high temperatures and radiate brightly, particularly in X-rays. Maccarone's team found one such stellar-mass black hole by chance feeding in a globular cluster in a galaxy named NGC 4472, about fifty million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster.

XMM-Newton is extremely sensitive to variable X-ray sources and can efficiently search across large patches of the sky. The team also used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has superb angular resolution to pinpoint the X-ray source's location. This allowed them to match up the position of the X-ray source with optical images to prove that the black hole was indeed in a globular cluster.

Globular clusters are some of the oldest structures in the universe, containing stars over 12 thousand million years old. Black holes in a cluster would likely have formed many thousand millions of years ago, which is why astronomers have assumed they would have been kicked out a long time ago.

Details in the X-ray light detected by XMM-Newton leave little doubt that this is a black hole - the object is too bright, and varies by too much to be anything else. In fact, the source is 'extra bright', - an Ultraluminous X-ray object, or ULX. ULXs are brighter than the 'Eddington limit' for stellar mass black holes, the brightness level at which the outward force from X-rays is expected balance the powerful gravitational forces from the black hole. Thus it is often suggested that the ULXs might be intermediate mass black holes – black holes of thousands of solar masses, heavier than the 10-solar-mass stellar black holes, and lighter than the million to thousand million solar mass black holes in quasars. These black holes might then be the missing links between the black holes formed in the death throes of massive stars and the ones in the centres of galaxies.

It is perhaps possible for a stellar-mass black hole to gain enough mass through merging with other stellar-mass black holes or accreting star gas to stay locked in a cluster. About 100 solar masses would do. Once entrenched, the black hole has the opportunity to merge with other black holes or accrete gas from a local neighbourhood rife with star-stuff. In this way, they could grow into IMBHs.

"If a black hole is massive enough, there's a good chance it can survive the pressures of living in a globular cluster, since it will be too heavy to be kicked out," said Arunav Kundu of Michigan State University, a co-author on the Nature report. "That's what is intriguing about this discovery. We may be seeing how a black hole can grow considerably, become more entrenched in the cluster, and then grow some more.

"On the other hand," continued Kundu, "there are a variety of ways to make ULXs without requiring intermediate mass black holes. In particular, if the light goes out in a different direction than the one from which the gas comes in, it doesn't put any force on the gas. Also, if the light can be 'focused' towards us by reflecting off the gas in the same way that light from a flashlight bulb bounces off the little mirror in the flashlight, making the object appear brighter than it really is."

Ongoing work will help to determine whether this object is a stellar-mass black hole showing an unusual manner of sucking in gas, allowing it to be extra bright, or an IMBH. The team, which also includes Steve Zepf from Michigan State University, and Katherine Rhode from Wesleyan University, has data for thousands of other globular clusters, which they are now analyzing in an effort to determine just how common this phenomenon is.


Note

The findings appear on line in the 4 January issue of the journal Nature, in the article titled: "A black hole in a globular cluster", by Thomas J. Maccarone, Arunav Kundu, Stephen E. Zepf and Katherine L. Rhode.


Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

think it is cool how einstein found black holes as a mathmatical anomaly back in the 30's or whatever then later we are confirming thier exsistance via chandra/newton etc. I find these singulaities to be the MOST bizarre thing in science and it really exciting even a little daunting to consider the forces at work here.....B.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
removed quote as it contained the entire previous message.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

think it is cool how einstein found black holes as a mathmatical anomaly back in the 30's or whatever

The mathematics that lead to the modern Black Hole concept was done by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916. However the concept of a body that was so massive that even light could not escape dates back to a paper written by John Michell in 1784.

Links: Karl Schwarzschild - Wikipedia, John Michell - Wikipedia

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A black hole has been found inside a compact group of ancient stars known as a globular cluster.

Astronomers say the discovery is interesting because many doubted black holes could exist in such locations.

Some computer simulations had suggested a newly formed black hole would simply be ejected from the cluster as a result of gravitational interactions.

Tom Maccarone, of the University of Southampton (UK), and colleagues report the finding in the journal Nature.

It was made using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite, with follow-up observations on the US space agency's Chandra Space Telescope - both are sensitive to the X-ray light that is emitted when gas consumed by a black hole is torn apart.

The international team says its work provides the first convincing evidence that some black holes might not only survive but grow and flourish in globular clusters.

In between

What has astonished the scientists is how quickly the black hole was found.

"We were preparing for a long, systematic search of thousands of globular clusters with the hope of finding just one black hole," said Dr Maccarone. "But bingo, we found one as soon as we started the search. It was only the second globular cluster we looked at."

The black hole is located in a globular cluster associated with a galaxy named NGC 4472, some 55 million light-years away.

Globular clusters are among the oldest structures in the Universe. They contain thousands to millions of stars packed into a region of space just a few tens of light-years across.

These high densities should lead to frequent interactions and even collisions; and some models have suggested that large black holes - several hundred times the mass of our Sun - could develop in the densest inner regions of clusters.

Other simulations, however, predict that such gravitational interplay would probably eject most or all of the black holes that form in such an environment.

The team is uncertain about the size of the NGC 4472 hole; but if it is reasonably large - and one interpretation of the X-ray data suggests it could be 400 times the mass of our Sun - it might have been able to anchor itself in the cluster, said co-author Arunav Kundu of Michigan State University, US.

"This is one of the interesting aspects of this study," he told BBC News.

"People have seen stellar-sized black holes that form from [an exploded] star, and then there are the super-massive black holes at the centres of galaxies that are millions of times the mass of our Sun - but there's nothing in between.

"Some people expect that globular clusters might be the environment where you would see intermediate-mass black holes."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6231623.stm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The above post has been merged into his thread as they are on the same subject.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
Universe contains more calcium than expected


linked-image
This image was taken by ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, and shows the cluster
of galaxies Abell 1689. The hot gas in clusters of galaxies tells astronomers something
about the way supernova's explode.

Credits: ESA, Jelle de Plaa (SRON)


6 February 2007
The universe contains one and a half times more calcium than previously assumed. This conclusion was drawn by astronomers of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, after observations with ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.

This research offers scientists new insights in the formation history of the elemental building blocks of the cosmos in which supernovae play a crucial role.

The iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the silicon in the sand box, all the atoms we are made of are released during the violent final moments of massive stars in the act of dying. These so-called supernova explosions eject newly made chemical elements into space where they become the building blocks for new stars, planets, or even life. However, many questions concerning the very formation of elements and the way they get distributed across the universe still remain open.


linked-image
Hubble's image of Galaxy cluster Abell 1689. This cluster is situated two thousand
million light-years away, and is one of the most massive objects in the Universe.
Abell 1689 was also imaged by ESA's XMM-Newton.

Credits: Credit: NASA, N. Benitez (JHU), T. Broadhurst (Racah Institute of Physics/
The Hebrew University), H. Ford (JHU), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI),
G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory), the ACS Science Team and ESA


According to Jelle de Plaa, space researcher at SRON, many answers can be found in distant clusters of galaxies. "Clusters are in many ways the big cities of the universe", he says.

"They consist of hundreds of galaxies, each containing thousands of millions of stars. The galaxies are embedded in a gigantic cloud of hot gas that fills this cluster like a smog. Due to their enormous size and numbers, clusters contain a large fraction of the total amount of matter in the universe. During the past thousand-millions of years supernova explosions have enriched the surrounding hot gas with heavier elements, like oxygen, silicon and iron."

Using XMM-Newton, De Plaa determined the abundances of oxygen, neon, silicon, sulphur, argon, calcium, iron and nickel in 22 clusters of galaxies. In total he saw the 'pollution' produced by about 100 thousand million supernovae. When he compared the measured amounts of elements in the clusters with theoretical models of supernovae, the calcium abundance measured thanks to XMM-Newton appeared to be one and a half times higher than theoreticians previously assumed.


Dance of death

De Plaa and his colleagues also found that many supernovae in clusters are the result of a dance of death between two stars that revolve around each other. A very compact white dwarf withdraws matter from its unfortunate companion star. The matter forms a layer on the surface of the white dwarf. When the dwarf reaches a certain mass, its core cannot any longer support the weight of the matter and explodes as a supernova.

"Roughly half of the number of supernovae that ever exploded in clusters appear to have exploded this way", says De Plaa. "This is much more than the fraction of this kind of supernovae in our own galaxy, which we estimate to be 15 percent."

The results will be valuable for the scientists who make supernova models. "Until now, supernova experts had to make educated guesses about how a supernova exactly explodes," continues De Plaa. "Because we measure the remains of 100 thousand million supernovae at once, we find more accurate averages than before. This will help the supernova community to learn how white dwarfs die."


Note

These findings will be published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, in the article titled: "Constraining supernova models using the hot gas in clusters of galaxies", by J. de Plaa, N. Werner, J. A.M. Bleeker, J. S. Kaastra, M. Mendez, and J.Vink (http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=forthcoming&Itemid=18, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20066382).

The findings also appear on line at Astro-ph in the article titled: "Constraining supernova models using the hot gas in clusters of Galaxies", by J. de Plaa, N. Werner, J.A.M. Bleeker, J. Vink, J.S. Kaastra, M. Mendez (astro-ph/0701553).

This research is the result of a cooperation between SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.


Source: ESA - Space Science
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the scientists are looking for calcium in the universe why?

Knowing the ratio of the elements in the universe enables them to understand processes such as the big bang, super novae and many others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
XMM-Newton reveals a magnetic surprise


linked-image
This picture shows a small extract of one of the X-ray images shot by the EPIC cameras
on board ESA's XMM-Newton for the Taurus-Auriga survey project. The bright star on
the left is one of many normal, young, solar-like stars in the Taurus-Aurigae star-formation
region. It shows bright X-rays from very hot gas. The star to its right is AB Aurigae.

The image has been color-coded, and the orange color shows that the gas of AB Aurigae
is much cooler than that in the other young stars.

Credits: M. Guedel/ESA


22 February 2007
ESA's X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has revealed evidence for a magnetic field in space where astronomers never expected to find one. The magnetic field surrounds a young star called AB Aurigae and provides a possible solution to a twenty-year-old puzzle.

At 2.7 times the mass of the Sun, AB Aurigae is one of the most massive stars in the Taurus-Auriga star-forming cloud. Although amongst nearly 400 smaller stars, its ultraviolet radiation plays a key role in shaping the cloud. Its massive status puts it in a class known as Herbig stars, named after their discoverer George Herbig.

As part of a large programme to survey Taurus-Auriga at X-ray wavelengths, XMM-Newton systematically targeted AB Aurigae and the other young stars in this region, using its European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC). AB Aurigae stood out brightly in the image, indicating that it was releasing X-rays.

X-rays are expected to come from young stars with strong magnetic fields but computer calculations have repeatedly suggested that Herbig stars do not have the correct internal conditions to generate an appreciable magnetic field. Yet for twenty years, astronomers have been detecting X-ray emission from them.

Where could the X-rays be coming from? Some astronomers suggested that Herbig stars could have a smaller companion star in orbit around them and the X-rays are coming from the companion.

However, when an international team led by Manuel Güdel and his graduate student Alessandra Telleschi, of the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland, analysed the AB Aurigae data, they found that the temperature of the gas producing the X-rays lay between one and five million degrees centigrade. "That was suspiciously low," Güdel says. Young sun-like stars possess gaseous atmospheres that are heated to 10 million degrees and higher, by their magnetic field.

Güdel and his team found another clue that the X-rays must be coming from AB Aurigae itself: the X-rays varied in intensity every 42 hours. This is a magic number for the star because astronomers know that the optical and ultraviolet light from AB Aurigae also varies by this same amount. "Finding the same periodicity confirms that the X-rays are coming from AB Aurigae and not from a companion star," says Güdel. But how are they generated?

linked-image
This picture shows a small extract of one of the X-ray images shot by the EPIC cameras
on board ESA's XMM-Newton for the Taurus-Auriga survey project. The bright star on
the left is one of many normal, young, solar-like stars in the Taurus-Aurigae star-formation
region. It shows bright X-rays from very hot gas. The star to its right is AB Aurigae.

The image has been color-coded, and the orange color shows that the gas of AB Aurigae
is much cooler than that in the other young stars.

The insert on the right (spectrum) shows how the X-ray intensity moved cyclically up and
down with a period of about 42 hours.

Credits: M. Guedel/ESA


To search for an explanation Telleschi and colleagues looked at high-resolution data of AB Aurigae taken with the orbiting observatory's Reflection Grating Spectrometers.

In this data they looked for a spectral fingerprint that would tell them how far above the star’s surface the X-ray-emitting gas was located.

To their surprise, they found that the X-rays were coming from high above the star. They had expected them to be much closer to the surface. X-rays high above the surface means that gas given off by the star, called the stellar wind, from two different hemispheres is probably being guided together into a collision. And the only thing that could do that was a magnetic field. It would not be a strong magnetic field, but it had to be a magnetic field nonetheless.

Luckily, a group of astronomers who had developed a magnetic field model of this kind for another class of star also worked in the Taurus-Auriga observing team. So it was easy for them to contribute their expertise.

Working with them, Telleschi, Güdel and their colleagues now propose that, as the vast pocket of gas collapsed to become AB Aurigae, it pulled with it part of the magnetic field that threaded that region of space. This field is now trapped inside the star and funnels the stellar winds together. Winds from the two hemispheres thus collide to create the X-rays.

It is a neat explanation for a twenty-year mystery but, at the moment, Güdel and colleagues do not know whether this is applicable to other Herbig stars. "That's the important question," Güdel says. To resolve it, high-resolution spectra of other Herbig stars will have to be taken.


Note

"The first high-resolution X-ray spectrum of a Herbig Star: AB Aurigae," by Alessandra Telleschi, Manuel Güdel, Kevin Briggs, Stephen Skinner, Marc Audard, and Elena Franciosini, will be published in a forthcoming issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.


Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
XMM-Newton finds the leader of the Magnificent Seven in a spin


linked-image
This image, obtained by the ESO/VLT ground observatory, shows the region of the sky
in which the neutron star RXJ1856 (indicated by the arrow in the yellow circle) is located.

Credits: ESO/VLT


9 March 2007
A decade-long mystery has been solved using data from ESA's X-ray observatory XMM-Newton. The brightest member of the so-called 'magnificent seven' has been found to pulsate with a period of seven seconds.

The discovery casts some doubt on the recent interpretation that this object is a highly exotic celestial object known as a quark star.

The magnificent seven is a collection of young neutron stars. Neutron stars are the dead hearts of once massive stars. They contain about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun but are compressed by gravity into ultra-dense spheres just 10–15 kilometres in diameter. A one Euro coin made of neutron star material would weigh more than the entire population of Earth. What sets the magnificent seven apart from the 1700 other neutron stars seen as radio pulsars is that they are not detected at radio frequencies but their surfaces are hot enough to emit X-rays.

The brightest member of the magnificent seven, RXJ1856 had been a mystery to astronomers since its discovery a decade ago because, despite the fact that it is so bright, no one had been able to find any pulsations and thus determine its rotation rate. That has all changed thanks to the work of Andrea Tiengo and Sandro Mereghetti, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Milan, Italy.

linked-image
This X-ray image, obtained by the EPIC instrument on-board the ESA XMM-Newton
observatory in October 2006 over a 19-hour observation session, shows the neutron
star RXJ1856.

Using XMM-Newton’s data, scientists were able to find signs of the long-sought-after
pulsations in RXJ1856, measuring a repeating 7-second pulsation (this corresponds
to the rate at which the object rotates). The pulsation observed by XMM-Newton is
shown in the inset.

This neutron star is a key object in the study of its stellar category: it provides the
second most perfect blackbody spectrum in the Universe, its distance and proper
motion are measured, and the pulsations have the smallest pulsed fraction ever
seen in an isolated neutron star. Until XMM-Newton’s measurements, the knowledge
of the rotation period was a missing key ingredient for the understanding of how
these objects behave. The results were possible only thanks to the large collecting
area of the EPIC instrument.

Credits: ESA/EPIC/Tiengo & Mereghetti


Using data collected by XMM-Newton, the pair searched for any signs of the long-sought-after pulsations in RXJ1856. They were successful, finding a repeating 7-second pulsation over a 19-hour observation of the source performed in October 2006. They checked other archival data and confirmed the pulsation registered in five other XMM-Newton observations performed between 2002 and 2006.

"The pulsations are a typical characteristic of a neutron star," says Tiengo. It means that the tiny object is spinning and that a hot spot on its surface is rotating into our line of vision every seven seconds, in the same way that a lighthouse sweeps its beam of light around in a circle. The pulsations in RXJ1856 have very low amplitude; this explains why they were not seen before.

linked-image
This X-ray image, obtained by the EPIC instrument on-board the ESA XMM-Newton
observatory in October 2006 over a 19-hour observation session, shows the neutron
star RXJ1856.

Using XMM-Newton’s data, scientists were able to find signs of the long-sought-after
pulsations in RXJ1856, measuring a repeating 7-second pulsation (this corresponds
to the rate at which the object rotates). The pulsation observed by XMM-Newton is
shown in the inset.

This neutron star is a key object in the study of its stellar category: it provides the
second most perfect blackbody spectrum in the Universe, its distance and proper
motion are measured, and the pulsations have the smallest pulsed fraction ever
seen in an isolated neutron star. Until XMM-Newton’s measurements, the knowledge
of the rotation period was a missing key ingredient for the understanding of how
these objects behave. The results were possible only thanks to the large collecting
area of the EPIC instrument.

Credits: ESA/EPIC/Tiengo & Mereghetti


RXJ1856 is an intriguing object for astronomers. The Hubble Space Telescope has supplied a very accurate distance to the object: 500 light years. This has allowed astronomers to use the brightness of RXJ1856 to estimate its radius. What they found puzzled them. The estimated radius came out to be smaller than 10 kilometres. This was taken as possible evidence that RXJ1856 was an even more exotic object, known as a quark star. In such an object, gravity has crushed the atomic nuclei into their constituent quarks.

"We don't rule out the quark star interpretation but the pulsations show that the object is also consistent with neutron star models," says Tiengo.

So astronomers are going to have to work harder to determine in which of these exotic categories RXJ1856 belongs. "If we can obtain more precise measurements of the period we can then see how fast the object is slowing down," says Mereghetti.

linked-image
Neutron stars slow down because their strong magnetic fields (one million, million times
larger than the Earth’s field) and fast rotation, produce electromagnetic radiation that
drains their rotational energy. Measuring the deceleration of the object would give
astronomers a clue about its magnetic field, which is responsible for creating the hot
spot that produces the pulsation.

Credits: ESA


Neutron stars slow down because their strong magnetic fields (one million, million times larger than the Earth's field) and fast rotation, produce electromagnetic radiation that drains their rotational energy. Measuring the deceleration of the object would give astronomers a clue about its magnetic field, which is responsible for creating the hot spot that produces the pulsation.


Note

The findings will appear in the 10 March 2007 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, (657: L101–L104, 10 March 2007), in the article by Andrea Tiengo and Sandro Mereghetti (INAF–Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, Milan, Italy) titled: "XMM-NEWTON discovery of 7s pulsations in the isolated neutron star RX J1856.5-3754."


Source: ESA - News
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
XMM-Newton pinpoints intergalactic polluters


20 April 2007

linked-image
This optical image of NGC 4051 was taken by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Kitt Peak, Arizona, USA. XMM has also studied NGC 4051, the results being published today in the Astrophysical Journal. The galaxy has an active black hole feeding voraciously on its surroundings.

A long-standing puzzle in astronomy, metals are found polluting vast tracts of intergalactic space. Through the XMM-Newton study, it is now known that they are produced by gas escaping from near the Event Horizon of a black hole, in particular, that of NGC 4051. Whether a similar phenomenon is seen in a more powerful active black hole will further be investigated with XMM-Newton.

Credits: George Seitz/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF


Warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be the key to a form of intergalactic ‘pollution’ that made life possible, according to new results from ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory, published today.

Black holes are not quite the all-consuming monsters depicted in popular culture.

Until gas crosses the boundary of the black hole known as the Event Horizon, it can escape if heated sufficiently. For decades now, astronomers have watched warm gas from the mightiest black holes flowing away at speeds of 1000-2000 km/s and wondered just how much gas escapes this way. XMM-Newton has now made the most accurate measurements yet of the process.

The international team of astronomers, led by Yair Krongold, Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, targeted a black hole two million times more massive than the Sun at the centre of the active galaxy NGC 4051.

Previous observations had only revealed the average properties of the escaping gas. XMM-Newton has the special ability to watch a single celestial object with several instruments at the same time. With this, the team collected more detailed information about variations in the gas' brightness and ionization state.

The team also saw that the gas was escaping from much closer to the black hole than previously thought. They could determine the fraction of gas that was escaping. "We calculate that between 2-5 percent of the accreting material is flowing back out," says team member Fabrizio Nicastro, Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. This was less than some astronomers had expected.

The same heating process that allows the gas to escape also rips electrons from their atomic nuclei, leaving them ionised. The extent to which this has happened in an atom is known as its ionisation state. In particular, metals always have positive ionisation states.

The warm gas contains chemical elements heavier than Hydrogen and Helium. Astronomers term them 'metals' since they are elements in which electrons are ripped away and they have positive ionisation states - like metals. They include carbon, the essential element for life on Earth. These metals can only be made inside stars, yet they pollute vast tracts of space between galaxies. Astronomers have long wondered how they arrived in intergalactic space.

This new study provides a clue. More powerful active galaxies than NGC 4051, known as quasars, populate space. They are galaxies in which the central black hole is feeding voraciously. This would mean that quasars must have escaping gas that could carry metals all the way into intergalactic space.

If quasars are responsible for spraying metals into intergalactic space, the pollution would more likely be found in bubbles surrounding each quasar. So, different parts of the Universe would be enriched with metals at different speeds. This may explain why astronomers see differing quantities of metals depending upon the direction in which they look.

However, if the fraction of escaping gas is really as low as XMM-Newton shows in NGC 4051, astronomers need to find another source of intergalactic metals. This might be the more prevalent star-forming galaxies called Ultra Luminous Infra Red Galaxies.

"Based on this one measurement, quasars can contribute some but not all of the metals to the intergalactic medium," says Krongold.

To continue the investigation, the astronomers will have to use the same XMM-Newton technique on a more powerful active galaxy. Such observations will allow them to determine whether the fraction of gas escaping changes or stays the same. If the fraction goes up, they will have solved the puzzle. If it stays the same, the search will have to continue.


Notes

The above results have been taken from the study 'The Compact, Conical, Accretion-Disk Warm Absorber of the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4051 and its Implications for IGM-Galaxy Feedback Processes' by Yair Krongold et al. Published 20 April, in the Astrophysical Journal.


For more information

Yair Krongold Herrera, Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Yair @ astroscu.unam.mx

Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist
Email: Norbert.Schartel @ sciops.esa.int


Source: ESA - Space Science - News Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.