Posted on 07/02/2019 10:12:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
Each new image of Eta Carinae reveals new subtle details, streams of light and filaments of gas and dust, that astronomers hadn't observed before. Photo by Hubble/NASA/ESA
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July 1 (UPI) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has captured Eta Carinae's fireworks in red, white and blue, just in time for Independence Day.
Eta Carinae is a binary star system located 7,500 light-years away in the Carina constellation. One of its two stars, which orbit each other, is large, highly unstable and nearing the end of its life. The dynamic stellar duo occasionally produces violent outbursts.
The system's most famous outburst occurred in 1838. In the wake of the eruption, the stars gradually brightened. By 1844, Eta Carinae was the second brightest star in the night sky.
The duo's time on top was short-lived, but the system remains a favorite target for astronomers. The 19th century outburst is still visible in the form of the dumbbell-shaped clouds of gas and dust.
Over the last quarter-century, Hubble has used nearly its entire arsenal of instruments to image the star system and surrounding nebula.
The newest ultraviolet portrait revealed a new luminous magnesium structure hiding between the the two dumbbells, filaments energized by the collisions between the waves of gas and dust ejected by the star system over millions of years.
"We've discovered a large amount of warm gas that was ejected in the Great Eruption but hasn't yet collided with the other material surrounding Eta Carinae," Nathan Smith, an astronomer with the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona and lead investigator of the Hubble program, said in a news release. "Most of the emission is located where we expected to find an empty cavity. This extra material is fast, and it 'ups the ante' in terms of the total energy of an already powerful stellar blast." RELATED Solar winds, polar heat explains Jupiter's warming atmosphere
By studying the movement of gas and dust in the nebula, evidence of previous eruptions, scientists hope to unravel the mystery of how the Great Eruption began. Each new ultraviolet image of the star system and surrounding nebula reveals new structural intricacies, details that might help astronomers better understand the dynamics at play inside Eta Carinae.
"We had used Hubble for decades to study Eta Carinae in visible and infrared light, and we thought we had a pretty full account of its ejected debris. But this new ultraviolet-light image looks astonishingly different, revealing gas we did not see in either visible-light or infrared images," Smith said. "We're excited by the prospect that this type of ultraviolet magnesium emission may also expose previously hidden gas in other types of objects that eject material, such as protostars or other dying stars; and only Hubble can take these kinds of pictures."
Yes. It used to be in the Northern hemisphere. Now all the pieces of the Argo are south of the equator.
It’s not that old a movie, is it?
Remember it being a promo line from the first *and best* “ALIEN” movie (1979)
Yep, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
LoL!.........
And also about the abandoned TAU Project. TAU stood for Thousands of Astronomical Units. It was intended as a way to get a telescope up above the galactic plane, and over the dust in that plane to get a direct optical view of the center of the galaxy.
See where I'm going with this?
We have a perfectly good (indeed, OUTSTANDING!) telescope already in space. A few modifications, remove the solar panels, replace them with deep space SNAP generators. Add an ion drive rocket, a bigger data transceiver, and a few other odds and sods. Orient the telescope to roughly the galactic plane and very slowly spin it like a bottle so that it pans the entire galaxy say once a day (week or month).
Visualize this as the telescope being the top bar of a 'T' (or tau) with the enhanced data link, ion engine, and such forming the stem of the 'T'.
At a very modest 0.01g acceleration, it would be 10,000 AU above the galactic plane in 8 years.
We'd have clear photos, clear optical photos of the galactic core. We'd have millions of images of our local neighborhood, and a very long baseline for exactly calibrating distances to stars in our own galaxy.
We'd be able to actually see the other arms of our galaxy! Right now we're stuck down in the smog, and like a mid 70s Angelino, we can't even see the local mountains! (execept they had occasional clear days!)
Only if they read FR. This is the first public mention of it, AFAIK.
Hubble-TAU, you quite literally heard it here first, folks...
The world’s biggest SELFIE!.............
There was a breakthrough on this subject recently; a long-term study had determined that aiming gyro failure in spacecraft on long-term missions is probably caused by static electricity discharges across their bearing races. Unfortunately, it comes too late to be uploaded to Hubble.
Unless it is fixed, the orientation gyro issues put a limit on Hubble's service life without visits from the ground.
Good. They could be replaced without improvements, 4 of six still working after 10 years, Hubble-TAU is an 8 year mission.
With improvements? 20 years or 30 years of data?
Voyager was designed to gather data for 12 years. 40 years on we’re still gathering data. But no pictures, the cameras were turned off in 1989...
It would take a particle accelerator the size of the Solar System to come close to the energy present in a single cosmic ray. A particle accelerator the size of the Milky Way Galaxy to simulate the energy needed to prove string theory. It probably takes less than that for civilizations to zero sum and realize that life is an illusion.
The correct time to 10,000AU at 0.01g is 5.5 years!
Beautiful image to celebrate Independence Day! Thanks!
Whydoes that picture remind me of Mt. Rushmore?
Here's your culprit right here: Jupiter Creamery
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