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(Source: cordjefferson)

Earth’s Largest Telescope Soon to Scan Cosmos for Extraterrestrial Signals

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The image above shows the supermassive black hole in the core of a distant galaxy known as Cygnus A spews jets of gas into space over distances of more than 200,000 light-years. The jets (orange) were imaged by the new International Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope in Europe. The picture shows how the jets slam into the hot gas surrounding the galaxy (blue, imaged by NASA’s Chandra x-ray space telescope).

Last year, scientists in the Netherlands unveiled the largest radiotelescope in the world, saying it was capable of detecting faint signals from almost as far back as the Big Bang  as well as hunting for the first stars and galaxies and potentially signals of extraterrestrial intelligence. 

The LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) consists of 20,000 small antennas measuring between 50 centimetres and two metres across spread out across the rest of the Netherlands and also in Germany, Sweden, France and Britain, said Femke Boekhorst of the Netherlands Radioastronomy Institute.  

The array consist of banks of antennas in 48 stations hooked up by fiber optic cables. Signals from these stations will be combined using a supercomputer, transforming the array into “perhaps the most complex and versatile radio telescope ever attempted,” said Heino Falcke, chairman of the board for the International LOFAR Telescope.

(via dailygalaxy)

Tuesday…2.0

Tuesday…1.0

‘El Gordo,’ Galaxy With Mass 2 Quadrillion Times The Sun’s, Discovered

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Take the number 2. Put 15 zeroes behind it, as Space.com says:

2,000,000,000,000,000

Now, think about the news from this story at that website:

The discovery of “the largest cluster of galaxies seen yet in the early universe, a giant that astronomers have dubbed ‘El Gordo,’ ” has been announced at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

And just how big is El Gordo thought to be? It “has mass about 2 quadrillion … times that of the sun, making it ‘the most massive known cluster in the distant universe.’ “

El Gordo is about 7 billion light-years from us. Scientists hope its discovery will help shed some light, as Space.com says, on “dark energy” and “dark matter.” And, as the BBC says, it’s possible El Gordo will help us figure out how galaxy clusters “form, grow and collide with one another.”

(via NPR) (LISTEN)

Monday…1.0

Massive Elliptical Galaxy & Cosmic Wave a Million Light years Long

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A Naval Research Laboratory scientist is part of a team that has recently discovered that vast clouds of hot gas are “sloshing” in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. The scientists are studying the hot (30 million degree) gas using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope to see the galaxies.

The long blue curved streamer you see above is a wave of extraordinarily hot gas (30 million degrees C!) over a million light years long that got “sloshed” around by the cluster’s gravity. Keep in mind that the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, 1/10th as big as that wave!

Abell 2052 is a galaxy located in the constellation Serpens, about 480 million light years from Earth. This image was captured using X-rays from Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope.

(via dailygalaxy)

Sunday…1.0

Saturday…1.0

Uploaded photos to flickr.

Kurt Donald Cobain

(via American Songwriter)

IMG_0923 (by Christopher Pecoraro)