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<ul class="summary-list"><li>A star positioned near the center of the Milky Way seems to have come from outside of our galaxy. </li><li>The interloper is thought to have traveled from a galaxy that has since disappeared. </li></ul>Scientists have spotted a star near the center of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/young-stars-appear-milky-way-edge-galaxy-collision-2020-1">Milky Way</a> that shouldn't be there.A study published Monday suggests SO-6, a star located about 0.04 light-years from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milky-way-black-hole-spinning-fast-squishing-space-time-2023-11">black hole at the center of our galaxy</a>, could be an extragalactic star that traveled more than 50,000 light years to reach our galaxy's heart.This is the first study to show that a star from outside our galaxy could end up in the middle of it.The findings could help explain a long-standing galactic mystery: where do stars near the black hole come from? <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milky-way-galaxy-black-hole-lights-up-suddenly-2019-8">Sagittarius A*</a>, the black hole inside our galaxy, is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-space-telescope-spots-most-distant-supermassive-black-hole-2023-7">supermassive</a> so its gravity is too intense for stars to be born in that area.<div type="image" title="milky way galaxy with zoomed in section on black hole" height="1041" width="1041" msid="105845077" hostid="261" sizebytes="51246"></div>To identify its origins, a team of scientists led by Shogo Nishiyama at Miyagi University of Education in Japan, studied the stars's composition using the Subaru Telescope, a 26-foot-wide observatory in Hawaii.They found the star was made of chemicals more often seen in <a target="_blank" href="https://subarutelescope.org/en/results/2023/12/03/3319.html">smaller galaxies that float outside the Milky Way,</a> like the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.The most likely theory is that SO-6 was born in a small galaxy that once orbited the Milky Way but has since disintegrated.The orphaned star, which is at least 10 billion years old, would have then been grabbed by the Milky Way's gravitational pull. It traveled at least 50,000 light years to reach Sagittarius A*, though it may have gone even farther than that as it's more likely to have gone in a spiral rather than a straight line.Scientists will now work to confirm the origin of SO-6, as well as determine if it traveled alone or with companions, lead scientist Nishiyama said."With further investigation, we hope to unravel the mysteries of stars near the supermassive black hole," he added.

A mysterious star from outside the Milky Way has somehow ended up near our galaxy's supermassive black hole

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are surprisingly rare in our galactic neighborhood.</li><li>Astronomers have wondered why for years, and now they may have an answer.</li></ul>Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-telescope-new-image-milky-way-colorful-heart-2023-11">Milky Way</a>, for example, is a spiral galaxy because of the way that stars, dust, and gas spiral out from the center of the galaxy.But <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-oldest-spiral-galaxy-formed-billion-years-earlier-than-thought-2021-5?r=US&amp;IR=T">spiral galaxies</a> like ours are surprisingly rare in our galactic neighborhood, and for years, astronomers have wondered why since the 1960s.Now, they may finally have an answer, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=b2aebdde3d997c79b253f5a8cf5ff5412f3bc8c606ec5dc4212b7cfe67070f28&amp;postID=656622febb2875d248beea58&amp;postSlug=astronomers-may-know-why-milky-way-galaxy-rare-2023-11&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41550-023-02130-6">Nature Astronomy</a> earlier this month.<h2>A turbulent past</h2>Using a supercomputer, researchers turned back the clock to approximately <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-black-hole-james-webb-space-telescope-discovery-early-universe-2023-11">13.8 billion years ago</a> when our galaxy and those around it were just starting to form.The researchers simulated the evolution of our galactic neighborhood to see what may have happened over billions of years to make spiral galaxies so rare in our corner of the cosmos.They found evidence of a turbulent past. The simulation showed that galaxies in dense clusters, like the one our Milky Way calls home, experienced <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-telescope-question-mark-space-galaxies-colliding-2023-8">frequent collisions and mergers</a>.<h2>When galaxies collide</h2>When galaxies merge, they can form a whole new type of galaxy. For example, when two spiral <a target="_blank" href="http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/geas/lectures/lecture29/slide05.html#:~:text=Many%20ellipticals%20are%20believed%20to,stars%20rotating%20in%20all%20directions.">galaxies collide</a>, it's thought to create what's called an elliptical galaxy.That's what both observations of our nearby universe and the simulations showed: Our galactic neighborhood has plenty of elliptical galaxies but very few spiral galaxies, suggesting that our Milky Way somehow survived amidst a chaotic scenario of galactic bumper cars over the age of the universe."Our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers," said co-author Carlos Frenk with the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University <a target="_blank" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1008389">in a statement.</a>

Scientists think they've finally solved the decades-long mystery of why our Milky Way galaxy is so rare

<ul class="summary-list"><li>NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured a stunning image near the heart of the Milky Way.</li><li>The chaotic region appears brilliantly colorful, glittering with the light of 500,000 stars.</li></ul>NASA's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mom-revives-her-career-mission-planner-james-webb-space-telescope-2023-9">James Webb Space Telescope</a> has captured a colorful, glittering image of a chaotic region near the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way, lies a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole that violently warps the very space-time around it, according to research recently published in the peer-reviewed journal <a target="_blank" class="hawk-link-parsed" href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/527/1/428/7326786">Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society</a>.Nearby are, "turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-captures-star-birth-formation-2023-7">forming stars</a>," said Rubén Fedriani of the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain, in a NASA press release.That's exactly what you're seeing in this stunning new JWST image that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-new-features-in-heart-of-milky-way/">NASA released</a> on Monday. The image is of the star-forming region called Sagittarius C. <h2>The perfect place to study stars</h2>Sagittarius C lives only 300 light-years away from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/first-image-reveals-black-hole-at-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-5">black hole at the center of our galaxy</a>, which is basically right next door compared to Earth, which is located 25,000 light-years away, per NASA. It's the perfect place for astronomers to study how a generic clump of gas can burst to life in the form of a star that then lives for millions to billions of years."The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-discover-fastest-runaway-stars-in-milky-way-galaxy-2023-6">Milky Way galaxy</a>, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test," said Jonathan Tan, a professor at the University of Virginia, in the press release.<h2>Revealing never-before-seen objects in our galaxy</h2>Digging into the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-best-images-from-first-year-2022-12">JWST image</a> and its wealth of data, astronomers discovered something they'd never seen before. Check out the bright pink cluster circled in orange near the center of the annotated image below:<div type="image" title="image of stars in milky way with features identified" height="720" width="1280" msid="105394202" hostid="261"></div>The cluster is what's called a protostar cluster. Protostars are the early stages of a star. They're compact clumps of gas that just haven't generated enough heat and pressure in their cores, yet, to qualify as a star. Protostars are usually surrounded by dust, which can make them difficult to observe with visible light, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://lco.global/spacebook/stars/protostar/">Las Cumbres Observatory</a>. However, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/times-nasa-webb-space-telescope-spotted-something-hubble-missed">JWST captures infrared light</a> that can see through the dust, making it an ideal instrument for studying protostars. And the powerful space telescope did not disappoint in its new image. In the center of the cluster, JWST revealed a giant protostar 30 times the mass of our sun that astronomers had never seen before, per NASA. Eventually, this enormous protostar will form into a massive star many times more massive than our sun. Massive stars like this don't have very long to live because they burn through their life's fuel very quickly. "In a few million years' time, the ultra-massive object will explode as a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-telescope-reveal-new-detail-iconic-supernova-2023-8">supernova</a>, in contrast to stars with masses similar to our sun's that can survive for billions of years," journalist Keith Cooper wrote for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.space.com/star-factory-galactic-center-james-webb-space-telescope">Space.com</a>.<h2>Hundreds of thousands of stars</h2><div type="image" title="An illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope in space." height="429" width="815" msid="105425466" hostid="261" sizebytes="35092"></div>Scientists estimate there are 500,000 stars in the new image.The bright blue section of the photo is a huge emission of ionized hydrogen that results from young massive stars spewing out energetic photons, NASA said. Within the wisps of blue are needle-like structures that shoot out in all directions without rhyme or reason, according to the agency.The sheer size of the cyan-colored region was somewhat of a surprise to scientists, who need to investigate further, NASA said."Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it," Fedriani said in the press release.

James Webb Telescope captures colorful, glittering image of the chaotic center of the Milky Way galaxy, revealing never-before-seen details

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-ask-nasa-for-huge-space-telescope-image-habitable-planets-2021-11">Astronomers</a> found a spinning object emitting ultra-powerful <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mystery-radio-waves-unknown-object-milky-way-center-2021-10">radio waves</a> in our "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milky-way-single-photo-12-years-constellations-supernova-2021-3">galactic backyard</a>."</li><li>It's the latest in a series of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vanishing-radio-signals-mystery-objects-in-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-1">mysterious radio signals</a> that may point to new types of dead <keyword id="12206001" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="stars" source="Orion">stars</keyword>.</li></ul>A spinning object in our neighborhood of the <keyword id="11921801" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="galaxy" source="Orion">galaxy</keyword> is beaming powerful <keyword id="12323603" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="radio-waves" source="Orion">radio waves</keyword> at Earth — and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vanishing-radio-signals-mystery-objects-in-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-1">astronomers don't know what it is</a>.The object is smaller than the sun and it must be spinning, because it only appears as an ultra-powerful radio signal for about one minute every 20 minutes, according to the Australian researchers studying it. The signal appeared and disappeared at this rhythm for several hours of telescope observations between January and March 2018. During its minute-long broadcasts, it was among the strongest radio signals in the sky."That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer, because there's nothing known in the sky that does that," Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the International Centre for Radio <keyword id="11949140" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="astronomy" source="Orion">Astronomy</keyword> Research, who discovered the object, said in a <a href="https://www.icrar.org/repeating-transient/">press release</a>.<div type="image" title="milky way with white star icon on the right" height="2811" width="4679" msid="89144787" hostid="261"></div>They haven't detected it since.Whatever the object is, it's only 4,000 light-years away, which is in our "galactic backyard," Hurley-Walker said. The researchers' best guess is that the mysterious object is the collapsed core of a dead star with an unusually powerful magnetic field.Tyrone O'Doherty, a PhD student at Curtin University, first discovered the object in archival data that the Murchison Widefield Array telescope collected in 2018. The finding was <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x">published</a> in the journal Nature on Wednesday."It's exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object," O'Doherty said in the release.<h2>A handful of 'transient' signals are baffling astronomers</h2><div type="image" title="radio wave animation shows distant bright light sending intermittent spirals towards earth" height="640" width="640" msid="89144788" hostid="261"></div>When astronomers detect a signal that appears and disappears, they know they have a dead or dying star on their hands. They call these fleeting signals "transients."Some transients appear suddenly and radiate radio waves for a few months before fading away. Those are usually supernovas — massive stars collapsing and ejecting their outer layers in a dramatic death. Other transients persist in the sky, flashing on and off in mere seconds, or even milliseconds. Those are pulsars — highly magnetized cores of long-dead massive stars, spinning rapidly and emitting beams of radiation from their poles.But no types of transient known to astronomers will appear for a full minute every 20 minutes, then suddenly disappear from the record.<div type="image" title="crab nebula green orange yellow web" height="1500" width="2000" msid="89144789" hostid="261"></div>This is the latest in a series of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vanishing-radio-signals-mystery-objects-in-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-1">mysterious objects astronomers have discovered using low-frequency radio telescopes</a>. Four other disappearing signals have come from unknown objects near the center of the <keyword id="12323604" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="milky-way" source="Orion">Milky Way</keyword>. They don't behave like any known transients and don't have much in common with each other, so astronomers have lumped them into a loose catchall category: "galactic center radio transients," or GCRTs.In their paper, the Australian researchers write that their nearby spinning object resembles <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03400">one of these GCRTs</a>, which emitted a radio signal every 10 minutes.Another group of mysterious transients, called "fast radio bursts," comes from other galaxies."Usually, when you find one object it suggests that there are probably many more out there in the universe. We just need to look for them," Manisha Caleb, a researcher studying fast radio bursts at the University of Sydney, told Insider in an email. "If anything, this discovery shows us that there are still many unknown unknowns out there in the universe."<h2>There could be more mysterious objects like this one</h2><div type="image" title="Murchison Widefield Array telescope structures in australian outback" height="2048" width="1365" msid="89144790" hostid="261"></div>Hurley-Walker and her colleagues think their mystery object could be an "ultra-long period magnetar" — the dead core of a massive star, highly magnetized, spinning very slowly.Scientists have never detected an ultra-long period magnetar before, but research leads them to believe they exist."Nobody expected to directly detect one like this, because we didn't expect them to be so bright," Hurley-Walker said, adding, "Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before."The astronomers who discovered the 10-minute GCRT also speculated that their object could be the elusive long-period magnetar.Astronomers studying fast radio bursts think those signals might also <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mysterious-fast-radio-bursts-come-from-dead-stars-2020-11">come from magnetars</a>. Slower spinning could indicate ancient magnetars, explaining why some fast radio bursts come from clusters of stars that are far older than magnetars are known to be.That makes this new object an exciting discovery, Kiyoshi Masui, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spooky-object-unleashes-periodic-bursts-energy-detected-milky-way-rcna13469">NBC News</a>: "There's all this stuff that's just waiting to be found."Hurley-Walker is monitoring the area where the object appeared, using the Murchison Widefield Array, the same telescope that first detected it. The mystery object has not shown up in telescope data since 2018, but Hurley-Walker hopes it will switch back on again. She's also scouring the archives for other objects like it."More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before," she said.

Astronomers discovered a 'spooky' spinning object in our galactic backyard, emitting some of the strongest radio beams in the sky

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mystery-radio-waves-unknown-object-milky-way-center-2021-10">Mysterious radio waves</a> emanating from the center of the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milky-way-galaxy-photo-contest-winners-2021-5">galaxy</a> have astronomers stumped.</li><li>Four objects have briefly emitted <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-developing-plan-to-build-radio-telescope-on-the-moon-2021-4">radio signals</a> that don't resemble any known type of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launches-nasa-ixpe-satellite-black-holes-dead-stars-2021-12">star</a>.</li></ul>Ziteng Wang found a needle in an astronomical haystack.Wang, a physics PhD student at the University of Sydney, was combing through data from Australia's ASKAP radio telescope in late 2020. His research team had detected 2 million objects with the telescope and was classifying each one.The computer identified most of the <keyword id="12206001" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="stars" source="Orion">stars</keyword>, and the stage of life or death they were in. It picked out telltale signs of a pulsar (a rapidly rotating dead star), for example, or a supernova explosion. But <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mystery-radio-waves-unknown-object-milky-way-center-2021-10">one object in the center of our galaxy stumped the computer and the researchers</a>.<div type="image" title="radio wave animation shows distant bright light sending intermittent spirals towards earth" height="640" width="640" msid="88918298" hostid="261"></div>The object emitted powerful <keyword id="12323603" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="radio-waves" source="Orion">radio waves</keyword> throughout 2020 — six signals over nine months. Its irregular pattern and polarized radio emissions didn't look like anything the researchers had seen before.Even stranger, they couldn't find the object in X-ray, visible, or infrared light. They lost the radio signal, too, despite listening for months with two different radio telescopes.It reappeared suddenly, about a year after they first detected it, but within a day, it was gone again."Unfortunately, we don't quite know what behaves like that," Tara Murphy, a professor at the University of Sydney who led Wang's research team, told Insider.It was becoming clear that this was no ordinary dead star, like the other 2 million objects in their survey."That's when we started getting excited," Murphy said.The team sent their data to other radio astronomers, asking for theories. Bit by bit, they confirmed that no one had ever detected anything like it before.The researchers' conclusion: The discovery could belong to an obscure category of mysterious signals coming from the core of the <keyword id="12323604" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="milky-way" source="Orion">Milky Way</keyword>, known as "galactic center radio transients" (GCRTs). Before Wang's discovery, only three such objects had ever been identified.The name GCRT is a "position holder," Murphy said, "while we actually try and figure out what they are."<div type="image" title="milky way galaxy center purple red yellow starry swirls with white bright spots" height="1500" width="3000" msid="88918301" hostid="261"></div>Murphy is "100% confident" that the signals aren't coming from aliens, because technological signals would cover a much narrower range of frequencies, like humans' broadcast radios do.GCRTs have been a mystery for decades now. Nobody knows what type of star would make those unique signals, and each GCRT is different, leading researchers to believe the four signals are not coming from the same type of object.Any new discovery "adds to the full body of knowledge that either cements what we already know, or adds to it, or really could lead to revolutionary new understandings," Scott Hyman, who led the research efforts that discovered the three prior GCRTs, told Insider. "Whether these objects fall into those categories, we don't know. We don't know enough about them."<h2>A decade of searching only turned up 3 GCRTs</h2><div type="image" title="very large array about a dozen telescope radio dishes lined up in the desert" height="777" width="1170" msid="88918303" hostid="261"></div>Telescopes first began observing the center of the Milky Way in low radio frequencies in the 1990s. But it wasn't until the early 2000s, when Hyman's research team was studying data archives from such a low-frequency radio telescope, that they discovered a strange signal briefly beaming from the galactic center.The signal got stronger and then faded away over the course of a few months. Unlike other transient radio signals, there was no sign of it in X-ray observations.Hyman and his colleagues had discovered the first GCRT. Within three years, the team found another, which they nicknamed "the burper" for the radio bursts it sent out every 77 hours before disappearing.These were extremely "bright" signals, meaning they emitted powerful radio waves. Hyman figured they'd find many more GCRTs if they kept searching, including "dimmer," or weaker ones."We thought we were at the tip of an iceberg," said Hyman, who is retired but formerly worked as a physics professor and researcher at Sweet Briar College. "We expected that, given the first one was so easy to find, that we would find more. But I think we were just lucky."In about 10 years of searching, they only found one more GCRT. It, too, was hidden in archival data. They studied the skies anew with the Very Large Array radio telescopes, but none of their signals turned up again.Wang and Murphy may have finally found another GCRT, but their discovery didn't shed much light on what these mysterious objects might be.<h2>Astronomers only have 'unsatisfying' theories until they discover more GCRTs</h2><div type="image" title="pulsar illustration bright blue ball with beams shooting out swirling in red material" height="1687" width="2250" msid="88918305" hostid="261"></div>Researchers have theories about the GCRTs, but "none of them are very satisfying," Murphy said.The GCRTs could be neutron stars or pulsars orbiting each other in sets of two or three, so that the radio signal from one star is eclipsed at irregular intervals by the others. They could be pulsars dying — running out of energy — and emitting irregular radio gasps.Hyman still thinks there are other, undiscovered GCRTs, some of them obscured by the thick dust that pervades the center of the Milky Way.<div type="image" title="milky way center red dust crowded with stars" height="1384" width="1845" msid="88918307" hostid="261"></div>New observatories are monitoring the galactic center better than Hyman could in the 2000s. Whenever the US Naval Research Laboratory releases new observations of the <keyword id="11921801" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="galaxy" source="Orion">galaxy</keyword>'s center, he scans them for signs of GCRTs. Murphy's team plans to continue listening to the galactic center with ASKAP, simultaneously looking for signs of their mystery objects in X-ray, visible, or infrared light.The Square Kilometer Array, currently under construction in Australia and South Africa, would be far more capable of finding GCRTs than any prior radio observatory, Hyman said. It's set for completion in 2028."I'm really hopeful that we can re-detect these three objects, figure out what they are," Hyman said. "They could be lurking in a very dim, quiescent state. They could be just very faint right now, and yet still detectable with a very sensitive instrument."

Unknown objects at the heart of the Milky Way are beaming radio signals, then mysteriously disappearing

Observations made by a small spacecraft called <keyword id="6720497" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="halosat">HaloSat</keyword> have shown that the <keyword id="67503" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="milky-way">Milky Way</keyword> galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or <keyword id="10138629" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="DYING-STARS">dying stars</keyword>. A halo is a large region filled with hot gas that surrounds a galaxy, also known as a "circumgalactic medium." The heated gaseous halo around the Milky Way was the incubator for the Milky Way's formation some 13 billion years ago and could help solve a longstanding puzzle about where the missing matter of the universe might reside. In the new NASA-funded study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the researchers concluded the circumgalactic medium has a disk-like geometry, based on the intensity of X-ray emissions coming from it. "The X-ray emissions are stronger above the parts of the Milky Way where star formation is more vigorous," said Philip Kaaret, Professor at the University of Iowa and corresponding author on the study. "That suggests the circumgalactic medium is related to star formation, and it is likely we are seeing gas that previously fell into the Milky Way, made stars, and now is being recycled into the circumgalactic medium." Every galaxy has a circumgalactic medium, and these regions are crucial to understanding not only how galaxies formed and evolved but also how the universe progressed from a kernel of helium and hydrogen to a cosmological expanse teeming with stars, planets, comets, and all other sorts of celestial constituents. HaloSat searches for baryonic matter -- that is, the same kind of particles that compose the visible world -- believed to be missing since the universe's birth. The satellite has been observing the Milky Way's circumgalactic medium for evidence that the missing baryonic matter may reside there. Baryonic matter is distinct from dark matter, which is invisible and does not interact through any force except gravity. Scientists can only account for about two-thirds of the baryonic matter that should be present in the universe. To look for the missing matter, Kaaret and his team wanted to get a better handle on the circumgalactic medium's configuration. More specifically, the researchers wanted to find out how big the circumgalactic medium really is. If it is a huge, extended halo that is many times the size of our galaxy, it could house enough material to solve the missing baryonic question. But if the circumgalactic medium is mostly comprised of recycled material, it would be a relatively thin, puffy layer of gas and an unlikely host of the missing baryonic matter. "What we've done is definitely show that there's a high-density part of the circumgalactic medium that's bright in X-rays," Kaaret says. "But there still could be a really big, extended halo that is just dim in X-rays. And it might be harder to see that dim, extended halo because there's this bright emission disk in the way. "So it turns out with HaloSat alone, we really can't say whether or not there really is this extended halo around the Milky Way," Kaaret said. HaloSat is a NASA CubeSat mission led by the University of Iowa. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nokia-is-set-to-build-the-first-4g-network-on-the-moon-for-nasa-it-will-eventually-be-upgraded-to-5g/articleshow/78763251.cms">Nokia is set to build the first 4G network on the Moon for NASA — it will eventually be upgraded to 5G</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-moon-photobombed-nasas-view-of-the-sun/articleshow/78762020.cms">The Moon photobombs NASA's view of the Sun</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/wipro-wins-five-year-contract-with-europes-third-largest-producer-of-clean-electricity/articleshow/78761079.cms">Wipro wins five-year contract with Europe’s third-largest producer of clean electricity</a>

The Milky Way is recycling its gases to form a clumpy halo

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A planet five times the size of Earth was found to be the shiniest planet outside our solar system. </li><li>Its mirror-like layer of clouds is laced with scorching titanium that rains down on its surface.</li></ul>Astronomers have spotted the shiniest known planet in the Milky Way, and it has metal clouds that appear to be raining down titanium droplets. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-exoplanets-discovered-astronomers-find-water-alien-worlds-life-2023-1">Exoplanet</a> LTT9779 b, which orbits a star about 262 light-years from Earth, is so reflective it acts almost like a mirror, the European Space Agency (ESA) <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheops/Cheops_shows_scorching_exoplanet_acts_like_a_mirror" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a press release.This planet's hot metal atmosphere is defying astronomers' rules for how planets of this size should behave."It's a planet that shouldn't exist," said Vivien Parmentier, a researcher at the Observatory of Côte d'Azur.<h2>Hot clouds of molten titanium</h2><div type="image" title="The exoplanet appears to have an atmosphere layeres with white and green strippes." height="1010" width="1346" msid="101702326" hostid="261" sizebytes="11396"></div>Exoplanet LTT9779 b was <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/602431" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first spotted in 2020</a>, but it's only recently that ESA discovered how shiny it truly is. Thanks to the agency's <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheopshttps://www.businessinsider.com/space-telescope-cheops-launch-watch-live-2019-12" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHEOPS satellite</a>, which studies exoplanets, scientists found the planet reflects about 80% of the light it receives.By comparison, Earth, which is fairly reflective, only bounces back 30% of its sunlight. Venus, the solar system's shiniest planet, reflects 75% of the sunlight.Scientists believe the planet's mirror-like quality is due to the composition of its atmosphere. The metallic clouds that surround the planet are mostly made of silicate – the stuff that makes up sand and glass — and metals like titanium, per ESA. "Imagine a burning world, close to its star, with heavy clouds of metals floating aloft, raining down titanium droplets," said study co-author James Jenkins, an astronomer of Diego Portales University and CATA.And it's precisely this bizarre atmosphere that's fascinating scientists.<h2>A Neptune-like planet with an atmosphere that shouldn't exist</h2><div type="image" title="An animation shows how close the exoplanet is to its sun" height="300" width="600" msid="101702330" hostid="261" sizebytes="2052"></div>Exoplanet LTT9779 b is really close to its star. It is so close it orbits it in just under a day. It's also very big and very hot, about 3,6oo degrees Fahrenheit, which means it's similar to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-clearest-image-of-neptunes-rings-2022-9">Neptune</a>. And therein lies the conundrum. Neptune is very far away from the sun. Every time a planet has been found orbiting its star that closely before, it has either been a huge gas giant, similar to Jupiter, or a barren tiny rock planet smaller than Earth."We expect planets like this to have their atmosphere blown away by their star, leaving behind bare rock," Parmentier said.The secret may lie in the composition of the clouds themselves. "We believe these metal clouds help the planet to survive" in these conditions said study author Sergio Hoyer of the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory."The clouds reflect light and stop the planet from getting too hot and evaporating. Meanwhile, being highly metallic makes the planet and its atmosphere heavy and harder to blow away," he said. The findings were published in the journal <a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2023/07/aa46117-23/aa46117-23.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics</a> Monday.

The Milky Way's shiniest known planet has metal clouds that rain down titanium. Astronomers say it 'shouldn't exist.'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A new image <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-scientists-big-reveal-maybe-photo-milky-way-black-hole-2022-5">reveals</a> the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-black-hole-magnetic-field-event-horizon-telescope-2021-3">supermassive black hole</a> at the center of the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vanishing-radio-signals-mystery-objects-in-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-1">Milky Way</a> for the first time.</li><li>In 2019, the <keyword id="13903419" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="event-horizon-telescope" source="Orion">Event Horizon Telescope</keyword> captured the first-ever image of a supermassive <keyword id="13903417" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="black-hole" source="Orion">black hole</keyword>.</li></ul>For the first time, take a good look at the supermassive black hole churning at the center of our galaxy.Hundreds of scientists worked together to capture the first-ever image of the Milky Way's central black hole, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"). Research institutions across the planet unveiled the picture in simultaneous press conferences on Thursday.In the photo, a brilliant fuzzy ring of orange and yellow glows around a dark center — the accretion disk, a swirl of superheated material, circling the event horizon, where not even light can escape the black hole's gravity. That disk allows scientists to capture the black hole's silhouette, since the object swallows all forms of light, making it impossible to photograph directly.Researchers took this stunning photo through the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an international collaboration that involves 300 international scientists and eight radio observatories around the world. Xavier Barcons, director general of the European Southern Observatory, said at a press conference that the groundbreaking result is a timely reminder of what we can achieve when countries work together.Sara Issaoun of Harvard, an EHT collaborator, said that researchers gathered direct evidence that Sagittarius A* is a black hole, with a size of about 52 microarcseconds in the sky."This appears the same size in the sky as a donut on the Moon," she said at a press conference.In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole located 53.5 million light-years away. That picture showed a supermassive black hole at the center of another galaxy called Messier 87, or M87, more than 50 million light-years away. To achieve the photographic feat, the researchers linked telescopes across the planet to focus on the same object all together, creating a virtual observatory the size of Earth.<div type="image" title="first image of a black hole m87" height="1515" width="2020" msid="91521146" hostid="261"></div>For many EHT scientists, the next step was obvious: turn this groundbreaking cosmic lens to the heart of the Milky Way."We were all amazed that the image of Sagittarius A* looked so similar to the image of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy," Sera Markoff, co-chair of the EHT <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword> Council and astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, told reporters on Thursday. "This tells us that general relativity governs these objects up close, and any differences we see further away must be due to differences in the material that surrounds the black holes," Markoff said.Scientists think every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, from the very early days of the galaxy's birth. A major astronomical mystery is how black holes and their <keyword id="12393175" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="galaxies" source="Orion">galaxies</keyword> evolve together."Understanding black holes, at any level, addresses fundamental mysteries of the universe. If we're ever going to learn something that is completely unknown to us, it will be from doing something like studying black holes," Shep Doeleman, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and founding director of the EHT collaboration, told Insider ahead of Thursday's announcement."It's a wonderful time to be alive," he added.<h2>'Seeing is believing'</h2>Previous Nobel Prize-winning research has demonstrated that the supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way must be a black hole, based on the way that its gravity affects nearby stars. Doeleman compared that research to finding bones with teeth marks on the jungle floor and concluding there is a large predator in the area."Contrast that with taking a camera out and taking a snapshot of a lion," he said, adding, "Seeing is believing, in a certain sense."Sagittarius A* possesses the mass of 4 million suns, creating one of the most powerful gravitational forces in the universe, devouring the matter that falls into its event horizon. There's nothing to fear, though. It's about 27,000 light-years from Earth.<div type="image" title="Sagittarius A" height="565" width="754" msid="91521148" hostid="261"></div>Even though it's closer to us, this black hole was much more difficult to image than M87. It's 1,000 times less massive than M87, which means the accretion disk orbits multiple times in just a few hours."During one night of observing, it's constantly shapeshifting. So it's very difficult to combine all the observations from a single night and to make a still image. It's like having somebody move around while you're keeping the shutter open on your camera. Everything gets very blurry," Doeleman said.Though it's hard to capture, that speed makes Sagittarius A* ideal for studying the dynamics of black holes and how they evolve over time. It could take months of observing M87 to see the flares and feeding activities that occur on Sagittarius A* in just one week.The new image of the behemoth at the center of our galaxy could hint at even more exciting discoveries to come.<h2>Working toward video of the Milky Way's black hole</h2>These images are opening a new field of black-hole studies, and it doesn't stop with still pictures. EHT has branched out into a second project, called next-generation EHT (ngEHT), to make the first videos of black holes.The group is working to add more telescopes to its network and leverage new computer technology to process 10 times more data from those telescopes, Doeleman <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-black-hole-milky-way-center-2019-10">told Insider in 2019</a>. In doing so, he said, they could capture video of both Sagittarius A* and their original photo subject, M87, in about five years.Now, two years in, EHT has 11 telescopes in its network, from Chile to Greenland to France to the South Pole. Doeleman said this week that the collaboration still has to double its telescope fleet. He hopes that eventually, videos can reveal what a still image cannot: how those black holes devour matter, how they launch X-ray jets from their poles, and how matter orbits around them."We want to see it move and live and breathe. So we want to capture the dynamics of black holes in motion," Doeleman said.The first videos will probably be jerky and low-resolution, but EHT plans to keep imaging black holes in more and more detail.Correction: May 12, 2022 — An earlier version of this story stated that Sagittarius A* is about 52 arcseconds in the sky. The story has been updated to reflect the correct size of the black hole, which is 52 microarcseconds.

Meet the black hole at the center of our galaxy: Scientists just took its picture for the first time

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists may reveal the first-ever <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-black-hole-magnetic-field-event-horizon-telescope-2021-3">picture</a> of the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-animation-supermassive-black-holes-orbiting-2021-4">black hole</a> at the center of our galaxy on Thursday.</li><li>The National <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword> Foundation billed the announcement as a "groundbreaking <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vanishing-radio-signals-mystery-objects-in-milky-way-galaxy-center-2022-1">Milky Way</a> discovery."</li></ul>The scientists who revealed the first image of a <keyword id="13903417" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="black-hole" source="Orion">black hole</keyword>, in 2019, have a major new announcement to make on Thursday.They won't say what they've discovered. But after the snapshot of the first black hole, which was located in another galaxy, the collaboration began working toward capturing imagery of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It's possible that they'll reveal the first-ever picture of our galaxy's black hole, which is called Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star) and possesses the mass of 4 million suns.In a press release, the National Science Foundation teased a "groundbreaking Milky Way discovery" by the black-hole-hunting collaboration, which is called the <keyword id="13903419" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="event-horizon-telescope" source="Orion">Event Horizon Telescope</keyword> (EHT). At least seven research institutions across the planet will hold simultaneous press conferences to announce the discovery on Thursday at 9 a.m. ET.Watch the announcement live, in the video embedded below.Sagittarius A* has never been captured in detail. At best, NASA's Chandra telescope orbiting Earth has spotted the bright X-rays flaring around the black hole.For any individual telescope, getting a clear close-up image of a black hole is impossible. To capture their first image in 2019, the EHT researchers solved this problem by linking telescopes across the planet to focus on the same object all together, creating a virtual observatory the size of Earth.<div type="image" title="Sagittarius A" height="565" width="754" msid="91503810" hostid="261"></div>Shep Doeleman, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and founding director of the EHT collaboration, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-black-hole-milky-way-center-2019-10">told Insider in 2019</a> that the group was focusing its attention on Sagittarius A*, as well as branching into a separate project, called next-generation EHT, to create the first video footage of a black hole.The group would need to add more telescopes to its network and leverage new computer technology to process 10 times more data from those telescopes, Doeleman said at the time. In doing so, he estimated that they could capture video of both Sagittarius A* and their original photo subject, M87, in about five years.Now it's more than two years later — too early for video, according to Doeleman's 2019 predictions, but potentially early enough for a clear image.A representative for EHT declined to share further details ahead of Thursday's announcement.<h2>Videos would shed new light on how black holes eat</h2>Eventually, videos could reveal what a still image cannot: how black holes devour matter."We can see the black hole evolve in real time," Doeleman said in 2019. "Then we can understand how it launches these jets that come from its north and south poles. We can see how it evolves with the galaxy. We can even test Einstein's gravity in completely different ways, by looking at the orbits of matter — not light, but matter — around the black hole."The first videos will probably be rudimentary, according to Doeleman, but further upgrades would allow EHT to capture the black holes in more and more detail."They might be jerky. They might be low-resolution, but they would be the first steps," Doeleman said in 2019, adding, "When we have 20 [telescope] dishes, that's going to be such a big leap. That will give us the high-fidelity movies that we want to make."

Scientists might reveal the first photo of our galaxy's central black hole on Thursday. Watch their announcement live.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers can see a distant <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hubble-telescope-photo-reveals-eye-of-the-serpent-spiral-galaxy-2020-9">galaxy</a> dying as it bleeds cold gas into space.</li><li>Such gas is critical for forming <keyword id="6370911" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Stars">stars</keyword>. <keyword id="92335" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="galaxies">Galaxies</keyword> die when they can no longer do so.</li><li>This galaxy formed from a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-collision-gravitational-waves-reveal-impossible-black-hole-2020-9">collision</a> in which two galaxies <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-images-milky-way-andromeda-galaxy-collide-2019-11">merged</a> into one. That left a "tail" that's shedding 10,000 suns' worth of gas each year.</li></ul>For the first time, astronomers can clearly see a galaxy beginning to die.Nine billion light-years away, galaxy ID2299 is losing critical cold gas that helps create new stars. Every year, it's bleeding out enough gas to make 10,000 suns. Already, it has lost nearly half of its cold gas. The rest is being used up to form new stars, at a pace hundreds of times faster than in the Milky Way.At this rate, the galaxy will soon run out of spare gas and be unable to make new stars. For a galaxy, that's death.The team of researchers that discovered ID2299 and its impending demise published their findings on Monday in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01268-x">Nature Astronomy</a>.They think ID2299 formed after two galaxies crashed together and merged, creating a new galaxy. This resulting galaxy has a telltale "tidal tail," from which streams of stars and interstellar material are trailing out into space.Tidal tails often form when galaxies' outer layers get stripped away as they merge. Such tails in distant galaxies are usually too dim for astronomers on Earth to see, though they have been detected on hundreds of galaxies. The researchers spotted this one just as it started to extend into space. That's where all the gas is escaping.<div type="image" title="galaxies collide collision tidal tail galaxy mice" height="1408" width="3000" msid="80242518" hostid="261"></div>The finding suggests that major collisions can leave galaxies leaking vital gases into space, a process that eventually starves them and halts star formation, thereby killing them."This is the first time we have observed a typical massive star-forming galaxy in the distant universe about to 'die' because of a massive cold-gas ejection," Annagrazia Puglisi, the study's lead author and a researcher at Durham University in England, said in a <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2101/">press release</a>.<h2>More than one way to 'die'</h2>As stars form, they produce winds. Scientists think there's a black hole at the center of every massive galaxy, which also produces wind as it devours material that falls into its gravitational pull. Astronomers think that these winds from stars and black holes carry star-forming material into distant space, eventually causing galaxies to die.But the discovery of ID2299's gas-leaking tail reveals a new path to galactic death."Our study suggests that gas ejections can be produced by mergers, and that winds and tidal tails can appear very similar," Emanuele Daddi, a co-author of the study and an astrophysicist at the Saclay Nuclear Research Center in France, said in the release. "This might lead us to revise our understanding of how galaxies 'die.'"The finding could also offer hints about where our own galaxy is headed. The Milky Way is shooting puffs of <a href="https://www.space.com/milky-way-mysterious-cold-gas.html">its own cold gas</a> into the void, and it's also on track to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-images-milky-way-andromeda-galaxy-collide-2019-11">collide with the Andromeda Galaxy</a> in about 4 billion years."Witnessing such a massive disruption event adds an important piece to the complex puzzle of galaxy evolution," Chiara Circosta, a co-author of the study and researcher at the University College London, said in the release.The researchers stumbled upon this doomed galaxy while studying cold gas in 100 faraway galaxies, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean desert."I was eager to learn more about this weird object because I was convinced that there was some important lesson to be learned about how distant galaxies evolve," Puglisi said.

You Searched For "milky way stars" and got 10 results

A mysterious star from outside the Milky Way has somehow ended up near our galaxy's supermassive black hole

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Scientists think they've finally solved the decades-long mystery of why our Milky Way galaxy is so rare

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James Webb Telescope captures colorful, glittering image of the chaotic center of the Milky Way galaxy, revealing never-before-seen details

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Astronomers discovered a 'spooky' spinning object in our galactic backyard, emitting some of the strongest radio beams in the sky

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Unknown objects at the heart of the Milky Way are beaming radio signals, then mysteriously disappearing

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The Milky Way is recycling its gases to form a clumpy halo

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The Milky Way's shiniest known planet has metal clouds that rain down titanium. Astronomers say it 'shouldn't exist.'

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Meet the black hole at the center of our galaxy: Scientists just took its picture for the first time

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Scientists might reveal the first photo of our galaxy's central black hole on Thursday. Watch their announcement live.

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Astronomers spotted a galaxy dying after a major collision. It's bleeding out 10,000 suns' worth of gas each year.

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