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2125 - Astronomy's Strange Discoveries. (1) The
Deadliest blast of Gamma Ray, (2) The fastest star leaving the galaxy. (3) The
planet hot enough to melt lead. (4) The asteroids older than Earth. (5) The
biggest collision of galaxies. (6) The farthest galaxy
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---------------------------------- 2125 -
Astronomy's Strange Discoveries.
-
- "What the heck is goin on round here?"
is what my grandson Nathan said all the time.
He was 3 years old and whenever he encountered something strange, “ What
the heck’s goin on round here?”
-
- That must
be the way astronomers feel these days.
As technology allows them to see more and make more discoveries they
encounter some very strange ones. Here
are a few examples:
-
------------------- (1)
The Deadliest blast of Gamma Rays
------------------- (2)
The fastest star leaving the galaxy
------------------- (3)
The planet hot enough to melt lead
------------------- (4)
The asteroids older than Earth
------------------- (5)
The biggest collision of galaxies
------------------- (6)
The farthest galaxy
-
- (6)
The farthest galaxy. Its
starlight is just now reaching us. The
starlight left the galaxy 13,000,000,000 years ago. At the time the Universe was only 750,000,000
years old. Astronomers believe the very
first stars appeared about 100,000,000 years after the Big Bang. But, that galaxies did not form until about
1,000,000,000 years. So, this galaxy
that the Hubble Deep Field telescope discovered must be one of the very first
galaxies.
-
- It is a young galaxy with many bright forming
stars. When the very first stars and
galaxies formed they were made of only hydrogen and helium ( an electron and a
proton, or two electrons and two protons.)
None of the heavier elements were yet created.
-
-
However, the first stars were massive
and had very short lives, about 10,000,000 years. When they died they went supernova and spread
the periodic table of elements into interstellar space for the next generation
of stars to use.
-
- (5)
The biggest collision of galaxies.
The Spitzer Space Telescope has images of four galaxies all colliding in a cluster called CL0958+4702. When this merger is finished it will be 10
times the size of the Milky Way.
-
-
The Milky Way will double in size in
2,000,000,000 years. That is when the
Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will begin to merge. The massive Black Holes at the center of each
galaxy will form a Quasar that will
light up the sky in a galactic way.
There will be lots of new star formation during this collision.
-
- (4)
The asteroids older than Earth.
Asteroids 234 Barbara, 387 Aquitania, and 980 Anacostia have mineral
signatures that date these space rocks to be 4,550,000,000 years old. The four rocky planets here today were first
formed by billions of asteroids, colliding, fragmenting, and coalescing
together as they orbit the Sun in the original accretion disk. If we can get more data on these asteroids we
could learn how our Solar System was formed.
-
- (3)
The planet hot enough to melt lead.
The planet orbiting the star HD149026 was discovered in 2005. The method used was the radial velocity
method. The star wobbles as the star and
the planet orbit around a common center of gravity.
-
-
So, the star comes towards us than goes away from
us in a periodic cycle for each orbit.
The change in wavelength of the light occurs with the change in radial
velocity as it appears from Earth.
-
-
Later astronomers discovered that the planet past in front of its star causing
a tiny decrease in light, about 0.003 magnitude, on every orbit which took only
3 days. The mass of the planet was
calculated to 36% the mass of Jupiter, or 114 times the mass of the Earth. The light reflection was 30%, a 0.30 albedo,
putting its surface temperature at 1,540 Kelvin.
-
-
The albedo depends on the surface composition
and the color. The darker the surface,
the more light it absorbs and the less it reflects. It this case the planet absorbs 70% of the
light.
-
------------- Temperature
= 280 Kelvin * ((1 - albedo) / AU
distance from star^2)^0.25
-
- The day-side brightness temperature was
measured in the infrared 8,000 nanometers to be 2,300 K. This extremely high temperature indicates the
planet must be unusually dark in color.
A black ball of charcoal with a temperature above the boiling point of
lead. (footnote 1)
-
- The diameter of the planet is 73% that of
Jupiter and 83% that of Saturn. So the density is 1350 kg/m^3. The core must be 70 times more massive than
Earth. The planet must contain more
rocks and metals than all 9 planets in our Solar System. Its gravity would be 10 times that of
Earth’s. This is not a planet for
sissies.
-
- (2)
The fastest star leaving the galaxy.
HE 0437-5439 discovered in 2005 is traveling 1,600,000 miles per
hour. This exceeds the escape velocity
for the Milky Way Galaxy, meaning it is going to fly out into intergalactic
space leaving our galaxy forever. (footnote 2)
-
-
The star is only 30,000,000 years
old. It is 9 times the mass of our Sun
and 200,000 lightyears away in the Constellation Dorado. The best guess is that the star was a binary
in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.
The super massive Black hole at the center of this galaxy pulled the one
star in and the binary star was flung out in the opposite direction at a
velocity needed to conserve the angular momentum of the pair. The Conservation of Energy at work.
-
- (1)
The Deadliest blast of Gamma Rays.
If you were looking into the night sky on March 19,2005 at the Constellation Bootes, you could have
seen an object with your naked eye that was 7,500,000,000 lightyears away.
-
- The Great Galaxy of Andromeda is 250,000,000
light years away and you can see that with the naked eye in the northeast night
sky. All the other objects you can see,
2,000 to 3,000 in number, on a good night are less than 76,000 lightyears
away. They are all in the Milky Way
which is 100,000 lightyears in diameter and we lie 26,000 lightyears form the
center.
-
- This bright flash was Gamma Ray burst, GRB
080319B. It had a visible light
Magnitude of 5 to 6. 6 about the limit
of naked eye seeing. The redshift of the
flash was measured to be 0.94 which translates to a distance of 7,500,000,000
lightyears, half way to the Big Bang.
-
-
At the time that the flash occurred the
Earth was not yet formed. The flash
lasted for 20 to 40 seconds. The
luminosity of the flash was 2,500,000 times more luminous than the most
luminous supernova ever recorded. The
flash is caused when a massive star runs
out of fuel and the core collapses to form a Black Hole.
-
-
This shockwave released an intense burst
of high-energy Gamma Rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at
nearly the speed of light like a cosmic blowtorch. When the jets plow into surrounding
interstellar clouds they heat the gas to brilliant afterglows. These burst are the most luminous explosions
in the cosmos since the Big Bang.
-
-------------------------------------------------------------
(1) The mass is 36% of Jupiter’s 1.9*10^27
kilograms. The radius is 73% that of
Jupiter’s 71,492 kilometers. The volume
is 4/3 pi*r^3. Volume = 5.23*10^23
meters^3. Density = mass per unit
volume. Density = 1,300 kg / m^3. Coal is 1350 kg/m^3.
-
(2)
The Escape Velocity = 2*G*M / R. Where the Mass of the Milky May is 10^11
solar mass making it 1.9 * 10^41
kilograms. The Radius of the Milky Way
is 2.6*10^20 meters. G = 6.67*10^-11 m^3
/ kg*sec^2. Velocity = 312,000 meters
per second. Velocity = 698,500 miles per
hour for the escape velocity to leave the galaxy.
-
- October 15, 2018.
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------
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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--------------------- Monday,
October 15, 2018 -------------------------
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