Archive
Rings And Loops In The Stars: Planck’s Stunning New Images
Credit: M. Peel / JCBA / Planck / ESA
A ring of dust 200 light years across and a loop covering a third of the sky: two of the results in a new map from the Planck satellite. Dr Mike Peel and Dr Paddy Leahy of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JCBA) presented the images today at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2015) at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales.
The European Space Agency (ESA) Planck satellite, launched in 2009 to study the ancient light of the Big Bang, has also given us maps of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, in microwaves (radiation at cm- to mm-wavelengths). Microwaves are generated by electrons spiralling in the Galaxy’s magnetic field at nearly the speed of light (the synchrotron process); by collisions in interstellar plasma, by thermal vibration of interstellar dust grains, and by “anomalous” microwave emission (AME), which may be from spinning dust grains.
The relative strength of these processes changes with wavelength, and are separated using multi-wavelength measurements from Planck, from NASA’s WMAP satellite, and from ground-based radio telescopes, giving maps of each component.
Left-Handed Cosmic Magnetic Field Could Explain Missing Antimatter
An artist’s concept of the Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope (FGST) in orbit. Credit: NASA
The discovery of a ‘left-handed’ magnetic field that pervades the universe could help explain a long standing mystery – the absence of cosmic antimatter. A group of scientists, led by Prof Tanmay Vachaspati from Arizona State University in the United States, with collaborators at the University of Washington and Nagoya University, announce their result in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Planets, stars, gas and dust are almost entirely made up of ‘normal’ matter of the kind we are familiar with on Earth. But theory predicts that there should be a similar amount of antimatter, like normal matter, but with the opposite charge. For example, an antielectron or positron has the same mass as its conventional counterpart, but a positive rather than negative charge.
In 2001 Prof Vachaspati published theoretical models to try to solve this puzzle, which predict that the entire universe is filled with helical (screw-like) magnetic fields. He and his team were inspired to search for evidence of these fields in data from the NASA Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope (FGST).
Link To Full Story
NJIT’s New Solar Telescope Unveils The Complex Dynamics Of Sunspots’ Dark Cores
NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory
Groundbreaking images of the Sun captured by scientists at NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) give a first-ever detailed view of the interior structure of umbrae – the dark patches in the center of sunspots – revealing dynamic magnetic fields responsible for the plumes of plasma that emerge as bright dots interrupting their darkness. Their research is being presented this week at the first Triennial Earth-Sun Summit meeting between the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division and the American Geophysical Union’s Space Physics and Aeronomy section in Indianapolis, Ind.
The high-resolution images, taken through the observatory’s New Solar Telescope (NST), show the atmosphere above the umbrae to be finely structured, consisting of hot plasma intermixed with cool plasma jets as wide as 100 kilometers.
“We would describe these plasma flows as oscillating cool jets piercing the hot atmosphere. Until now, we didn’t know they existed. While we have known for a long time that sunspots oscillate – moderate resolution telescopes show us dark shadows, or penumbral waves, moving across the umbra toward the edge of a sunspot – we can now begin to understand the underlying dynamics,” said Vasyl Yurchyshyn, a research professor of physics at NJIT and the lead author of two recent journal articles based on the NST observations.
The Origin Of The Magnetic Field Covering The Sun Has Been Discovered
The magnetic field that covers the Sun and determines its behavior –the eleven year cycles no less than such conspicuous phenomena as solar spots and solar storms– also has another side to it: a magnetic web that covers the entire surface of the Sun at rest and whose net magnetic flow is greater than that of the active areas. A study led by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) has revealed where the flow that feeds this web comes from.
The outline of the solar magnetic web coincides with the boundaries of the so-called supergranules, structures linked to the existence of hot gas rising to the surface (similar to the bubbles made by boiling water) some twenty thousand kilometers in diameter.
“We have discovered that inside these supergranules, in what is known as intranetwork, small magnetic elements appear which travel toward the outer boundaries and interact with the web”, says Milan Gosic, IAA researcher in charge of the study.
A New View Of The Solar System: Astrophysical Jets Driven By The Sun
As the sun skims through the galaxy, it flings out charged particles in a stream of plasma called the solar wind, and the solar wind creates a bubble extending far outside the solar system known as the heliosphere. For decades, scientists have visualized the heliosphere as shaped like a comet, with a very long tail extending thousands of times as far as the distance from the Earth to the sun.
New research suggests that the sun’s magnetic field controls the large-scale shape of the heliosphere “much more than had been previously thought,” says Merav Opher, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University (BU). In the new model, the magnetic field squeezes the solar wind along the sun’s North and South axes, producing two jets that are then dragged downstream by the flow of the interstellar medium through which the heliosphere moves.
Researchers Find That Earth’s “Plasmaspheric Hiss” Protects Against A Harmful Radiation Belt
Courtesy of the reasearchers/Haystack Observatory
High above Earth’s atmosphere, electrons whiz past at close to the speed of light. Such ultrarelativistic electrons, which make up the outer band of the Van Allen radiation belt, can streak around the planet in a mere five minutes, bombarding anything in their path. Exposure to such high-energy radiation can wreak havoc on satellite electronics, and pose serious health risks to astronauts.
Now researchers at MIT, the University of Colorado, and elsewhere have found there’s a hard limit to how close ultrarelativistic electrons can get to the Earth. The team found that no matter where these electrons are circling around the planet’s equator, they can get no further than about 11,000 kilometers from the Earth’s surface — despite their intense energy.
What’s keeping this high-energy radiation at bay seems to be neither the Earth’s magnetic field nor long-range radio waves, but rather a phenomenon termed “plasmaspheric hiss” — very low-frequency electromagnetic waves in the Earth’s upper atmosphere that, when played through a speaker, resemble static, or white noise.
Link To Full Story
Link To Another Story
Origin Of High-Latitude Auroras Revealed
Auroras are the most visible manifestation of the Sun’s effect on Earth, but many aspects of these spectacular displays are still poorly understood. Thanks to ESA’s Cluster and NASA’s Image satellites working together, a particular type of very high-latitude aurora has now been explained.
Although separated by some 150 million kilometres, the Sun and Earth are connected by the solar wind. This stream of plasma – electrically charged atomic particles – is launched by the Sun and travels across the Solar System, carrying its own magnetic field with it.
Mystery Of Planet-forming Disks Explained By Magnetism
Artist’s conception. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Astronomers say that magnetic storms in the gas orbiting young stars may explain a mystery that has persisted since before 2006.
Researchers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to study developing stars have had a hard time figuring out why the stars give off more infrared light than expected. The planet-forming disks that circle the young stars are heated by starlight and glow with infrared light, but Spitzer detected additional infrared light coming from an unknown source.
A new theory, based on three-dimensional models of planet-forming disks, suggests the answer: Gas and dust suspended above the disks on gigantic magnetic loops like those seen on the sun absorb the starlight and glow with infrared light.
“If you could somehow stand on one of these planet-forming disks and look at the star in the center through the disk atmosphere, you would see what looks like a sunset,” said Neal Turner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Astronomers Find Solar Storms Behave Like Supernovae
Photo credit: NASA/SDO
Researchers at UCL have studied the behaviour of the Sun’s coronal mass ejections, explaining for the first time the details of how these huge eruptions behave as they fall back onto the Sun’s surface. In the process, they have discovered that coronal mass ejections have a surprising twin in the depths of space: the tendrils of gas in the Crab Nebula, which lie 6500 light-years away and are millions of times larger.
On 7 June 2011, the biggest ejection of material ever observed erupted from the surface of the Sun. Over the days that followed, the plasma belched out by the Sun made its way out into space. But most of the material propelled up from the Sun’s surface quickly fell back towards our star’s surface.
For the solar physicists at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, watching these solar fireworks was a unique opportunity to study how solar plasma behaves.
“We’ve known for a long time that the Sun has a magnetic field, like the Earth does. But in places it’s far too weak for us to measure, unless we have something falling through it. The blobs of plasma that rained down from this beautiful explosion were the gift we’d been waiting for”, says David Williams, one of the study’s authors.
IBEX Research Shows Influence Of Galactic Magnetic Field Extends Well Beyond Our Solar System
In a report published today, new research suggests the enigmatic “ribbon” of energetic particles discovered at the edge of our solar system by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) may be only a small sign of the vast influence of the galactic magnetic field.
IBEX researchers have sought answers about the ribbon since its discovery in 2009. Comprising primarily space physicists, the IBEX team realized that the galactic magnetic field wrapped around our heliosphere — the giant “bubble” that envelops and protects our solar system — appears to determine the orientation of the ribbon and the placement of energetic particles measured in it.
An unlikely teaming of IBEX researchers with ultra-high-energy cosmic ray physicists, however, has produced complementary insights that dovetail with IBEX’s studies to produce a more complete picture of the interactions at the solar system boundary and how they reach much farther out into the space between the stars.
AstroNews 