Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

Galaxies colliding all over the place

Two new discoveries using the Gemini North and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea. I'll keep this short as I'm a bit tired. Gemini observed two galaxies colliding and then shared a "bridge" of star formation between them.

https://www.gemini.edu/pr/taffy-galaxies...g-material

The other, reported by Keck, is about two supermassive black holes that are about to collide, again, due to another galaxy collision.

https://www.keckobservatory.org/dual-quasar/

KHON2 also picked up on the latter discovery:

https://www.khon2.com/local-news/astrono...o-collide/

[TomK]

Another black hole discovery using an observatory on Mauna Kea, this time the Kecks. This time it's a rogue supermassive black hole that's creating stars in its wake.

"Astronomers Spy a Giant Runaway Black Hole’s Starry Wake"

"A candidate “rogue” supermassive black hole may weigh as much as 20 million suns and has sparked a trail of star formation that is 200,000 light-years long"

"That black hole was discovered by chance when it first appeared as a faint linear streak in a Hubble Space Telescope observation of globular clusters. Such features are usually artifacts of cosmic rays striking Hubble’s detectors, explains lead study author Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer at Yale University. Further observations via the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii revealed instead that the streak was a stream of young blue stars stretching across an astonishing 200,000 light-years."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...arry-wake/

Also, https://www.keckobservatory.org/runaway-black-hole/

"Keck Observatory also showed a bright knot of ionized gas at the top of the wake – likely the site of the black hole itself. Also, the linear feature’s home galaxy appears to be missing a black hole at its center, or at least does not have one that is actively feasting on material and generating powerful jets of energy that telescopes can detect."

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Another update of the Event Horizon black hole photo - - using AI to refine the image:

https://apnews.com/article/first-black-h...2d8e775bfb


A few quotes from The NY Times on the announcement:

The team is already analyzing the new image to gain a better estimate of the mass of M87’s black hole, but they are not yet ready to discuss it.

In the meantime the work continues, with an even bigger Event Horizon network. (Three new telescopes have been added.)
“People are at the telescopes,” Dr. Medeiros said.
(I would only add, unless they've been decommissioned or construction is delayed.)

[TomK]

"New Exoplanet-Hunting Technique Leads to Successful Direct Image of a Super-Jupiter"

This is an interesting new technique that combines two different methods that are already known that might help find Earth-like planets around other stars. Astrometry (measuring a star's precise position) is used to detect a tiny wobble in a star due to gravitational effects from orbiting planets, and then direct imaging is used to directly observe the exoplanet. The latter requires an exceptional observing site such as Mauna Kea.

"“This is the kind of discovery that really could have only been done from Maunakea,” said Currie. “We are extremely grateful for the privilege of being able to study the heavens from this mountain.”"

"“This is the first of many discoveries from our Keck and Subaru imaging program that uses astrometry to select targets. We already have additional discoveries that will be announced later this year and next year,” said Currie."

You can read more via Keck's press release here: https://www.keckobservatory.org/hip-exoplanet/

[TomK]

"Astronomers Spot First Direct Evidence of a Star Engulfing Its Planet"

As stars age they eventually start running out of fuel. First, it's hydrogen, then helium, and next to run out are carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (the "CNO cycle"). The rate that this happens is strongly dependent on the mass of the star with massive stars having a short lifetime whereas less massive stars such as our own continue to burn for 10 billion years or so. As these various fuels are used up, the temperature at the core of the star rises which increases the outward thermal pressure on the star's outer layers and it expands.

This is what will eventually happen to our sun and the Earth's orbit places it in the region that will likely end up with it being engulfed by the sun. However, this has not been observed before until now. The Keck observatory on Mauna Kea was used alongside other observatories to observe the results of the expansion of a dying star engulfing a Jupiter-sized planet that orbited the star.

https://www.keckobservatory.org/death-star/

"For the first time, astronomers have caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet whole. The sun-like star, called ZTF SLRN-2020, lies about 15,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy and is thought to have engulfed a hot gas giant planet about the size of Jupiter or smaller.

Scientists already knew that older stars will, as they puff up with age, ultimately ingest their inner orbiting planets. Our own Sun is predicted to do so in 5 billion years, consuming Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth. But nobody had seen direct evidence for such a remarkable scenario until now.

“The confirmation that sun-like stars engulf inner planets provides us with a missing link in our understanding of the fates of solar systems, including our own,” says Kishalay De, a postdoctoral scholar at MIT and lead author of a new study about this so-called “Death Star” publishing May 4, Star Wars Day, in the journal Nature."

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

a new study about this so-called “Death Star” 

To which I can only hope Spock in a crossover might reply "fascinating."


Thanks for the post, the photos of discoveries on distant worlds continue to get better and better.

[TomK]

Another Hawaii student, this time from Molokai'i High School, has made a name for herself by observing the magnetic fields within the famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion. She used a technique called polarimetry using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea to measure cold dust grains in the nebula that align themselves with magnetic fields due to the charge these grains hold.

"Commenting further on this data Dr Pattle said “The JCMT is a fantastic tool: we have used data from three of the telescope’s instruments to measure how bright and how dense the region is, and what its gas and magnetic fields are doing. We see that the interaction between the head and mane of the horse and the nearby young stars has significantly reordered the magnetic field – we suggest that the magnetic field has been folded back on itself along our line of sight as the Horsehead formed. Interestingly, though, the magnetic field in the cold clump sheltered by the ridge seems not to have been affected by the interaction that created the Horsehead – it behaves exactly as we would expect magnetic fields in an isolated dense clump to do. This supports the theory that the dense clump is sheltered by the ridge. This gives us important insight into how stars can continue to form even in regions like the Horsehead, where the cold gas that provides the material for new stars is being eroded by photons from nearby young and hot stars. We expect that our own Sun formed as part of a cluster of stars, and so looking at how stars form in the Horsehead Nebula may give us an insight into our own Solar System’s past.”"

https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/2023/...ad-nebula/

The research was recently published in the Astronomical Journal: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.38...881/acc460

The Maui News also wrote an article about her which thankfully doesn't seem to be behind a paywall:

https://www.mauinews.com/news/local-news...on-nebula/

['elepaio]

Sigh, another brilliant mind wasted on useless, mangaesc like tripe nobody cares beyond Tom types.

I hope she applies her work efforts next to something more beneficial for everyday society and hawaiian culture going forwards.

[TomK]

The CFHT on Mauna Kea has discovered several new moons orbiting Saturn. When I was a kid I could name the moons around Jupiter and Saturn but now it's impossible to remember them all, Jupiter currently has 95 moons and Saturn now has 117.

"Since last week, the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Minor Planet Center has updated the list of moons. Sunday passed Saturn hundreds of confirmed moons, and since tuesday The counter is even at 117. For comparison: in November last year the counter was “only” at 83.

The newly discovered moons were captured between 2019 and 2021 using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The fact that they have not been found before is because they are small (sometimes only two kilometers in diameter) or they are relatively far from the planet. The results were last year Already posted And this month, some of those candidate moons were officially confirmed."


https://www.taylordailypress.net/saturn-...red-moons/

[TomK]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being employed by astronomers using Mauna Kea telescopes to help study the early universe. Although machine learning is starting to become a somewhat controversial topic, at this point it helps people in many fields as diverse as chess and astronomy. In this case, scientists using the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea are using AI to help understand how stars formed in the early universe.


"Artificial intelligence has helped an international team using the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea see “indications that the very first stars in the universe were born in groups rather than as isolated single stars.”"

Big Island Video News - https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2023/...rst-stars/

"Astronomy seeks to explain the history of the universe — from its beginnings to the formation of our solar system and more. Subaru Telescope continues to lead the way to help find the answers to puzzling astronomical questions through state-of-the-art technologies.

In a recent discovery, an international team used artificial intelligence to analyze the chemical abundances of old stars and found indications that the very first stars in the universe were born in groups rather than as isolated single stars.

“Our new technique based on machine learning opens the door to study the mysterious nature of the first stars in the universe,” explains Subaru Telescope assistant professor Miho Ishigaki."