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Astronomers have identified the first known galaxy with three supermassive black holes in its core. The galaxy, NGC 6240, helps explain how huge galaxies can form relatively quickly.
Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at the centre, the combination of all the black holes that have slowly migrated and merged. It’s quite common to find 2 supermassive black holes in galaxies that have recently merged. This will be the case when our Milky Way and Andromeda spiral galaxy merge in 4-5 billion years time, and for a good while after, the two black holes will dance around a common centre of gravity until eventually joining to form a larger black hole.
So to find a galaxy with three supermassive black holes was unexpected, not just because the rarity of finding a galaxy that undertook 2 mergers in close succession, but that the three central black holes are within such a small area at the centre already. Clearly this can occur, albeit a rare event.
Ultimately the three will merge, probably 2 will merge together first, with the third merging at a later date (rather than all three merging together).
A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon, moving between the sun and the earth, completely blocks the light of the sun. An optimal view of this type of event can be found within the path of totality – the area where the umbral, or darkest portion, of the moon’s shadow falls upon the earth's surface. The path of totality is typically thousands of miles long but often less than one hundred miles wide.
When a total solar eclipse was anticipated in the mid to late nineteenth century, astronomers began travelling to areas within the path of totality to take pictures and record their observations. Staff members of the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory were among those early adapters of astronomical photographic technology. From the year 1900 onward, these scientists left their observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and journeyed to distant regions in order to document the moments in the brief life of an eclipse.
Solar eclipse images, including close-ups of prominences, coronas, and Baily's Beads, taken by Yerkes staff are available in the University of Chicago Photographic Archive as are snapshots of life on eclipse expeditions.
Image 1: apf6-02391
Prominences around the sun taken with the 61.5-foot coelostat telescope at Green River, Wyoming. Photograph taken on the Yerkes Observatory expedition to Wyoming to record the total solar eclipse of 8 June 1918.
Image 2: apf6-02379
"Heliosaurus" prominence on the sun's western limb (edge). Photograph taken on the Yerkes Observatory expedition to Wyoming and Colorado to record the total solar eclipse of 8 June 1918.
Image 3: apf6-02347
Baily's Beads are beads of sunlight seen round the sun during a total solar eclipse. These are named for their discoverer, the English astronomer Francis Baily. Photographed by George Van Biesbroeck at Khartoum, Egypt during the eclipse of 25 February 1952.
Image 4: apf6-02118
Corona of the sun. Photograph taken on the Yerkes Observatory expedition to Wadesboro, North Carolina to record the total solar eclipse of 28 May 1900.
Image 5: apf6-04597
Edward Emerson Barnard at the Yerkes Observatory eclipse camp in Wadesboro, North Carolina. Photograph taken on the observatory expedition to record the total solar eclipse of 28 May 1900.
Image 6: apf6-00785
Yerkes Observatory group and associates at Camp Wrigley. Photograph taken on the Yerkes Observatory expedition to Santa Catalina Island, California to record the total solar eclipse of 10 September 1923.
Image 7: apf6-03446-054
Harriet W. Bigelow and Charles Ridell and Dr. George S. Isham's hawk-eye lens on a universal movie camera with Isham's telescope. Photograph taken on the Yerkes Observatory expedition to Santa Catalina Island, California to record the total solar eclipse of 10 September 1923.
For information and maps about modern and historical eclipses, visit the Eclipse Website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
I love the stars. Because they can’t say anything. I love the stars. Because they do not judge anyone.
Natsuki Takaya
Fig. 4 Selection of intermediate feature maps in the first (top row) and second (bottom row) layer of the neural network.
‘One of the strengths of CNN is that the feature map at each layer is an image that can be visualized. We report in Figure 4 a selection of features maps from the output of the first and second layers. We can see that the first layer contains some low pass or directional filtering whereas layer two contains more semantic information.
Astronomical image reconstruction with Convolutional Neural Networks, Rémy Flamary, Université Cote d’Azur, Nice, France. Full paper available here.
“And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” – Revelation 6:13 On the night of November 13, 18…
Tens of thousands of meteor’s an hour lit up the skies and many people thought the end of the world was at hand. This meteor storm (a magnificently prolific showing of the Leonind Meteor Shower) was the beginning of our understanding of how comets and meteors work. Follow the link for the whole story and a fantastic interactive map of earth moving through the comet’s tail.
This 36 page publication was produced to coincide with the exhibition of the same name by Julie F Hill & Gauld Architecture at Swiss Cottage Gallery, London (Oct 2019– Nov 2020). Sculptures, video and photographic works made using a mix of artificial intelligence algorithms trained on astronomical datasets and related holdings from Swiss Cottage Library (in which the gallery was located) worked together to consider the library’s potential as a container for all knowledge. The publication also brings together responses from artists, scientists and researchers that further explore themes of knowledge architectures, computation and cosmos.
Highlights include:
Essay From The Big Bang to AI by cosmologist Dr Roberto Trotta
A text by Crystal Bennes’ on experimental particle physics & data, featuring facts about bears, Monte Carlo & Super-Kamiokande
First artwork made by a full scale quantum computer by artist, research and quantum physicist, Libby Heaney.
The publication is available to order here.
Tornado Quest Top Ten Science Links For November 26 - December 3, 2018
Tornado Quest Top Ten Science Links For November 26 – December 3, 2018
Greetings everyone! Here’s some good news…the Atlantic hurricane season for 2018 has officially ended. This will be a year that won’t be forgotten soon with Hurricane Michael devastating a vast area of Florida and Georgia. Winter weather has made quite a showing across much of North America with more to come…hence the inclusion this week of a few winter weather safety links. There are plenty of…
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