A new combined image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes comes from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope just in time for Valentine's Day.
This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink or magenta) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
The ring-shaped object on the right is a remnant of a spiral galaxy that collided with the elliptical galaxy to the left millions of years ago. The collision triggered a wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars.
Many of these new young stars raced through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes. Researchers estimate that the nine sources around the ring are likely 10 to 20 times more massive than the Sun -- a rather impressive weight for any Valentine's gift.
Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth, and visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
These results were published in the October 1, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and the authors are Saul Rappaport and Alan Levine from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Pooley from Eureka Scientific and Benjamin Steinhorn, also from MIT.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A new combined image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes comes from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope just in time for Valentine's Day.The ring-shaped object on the right is a remnant of a spiral galaxy that collided with the elliptical galaxy to the left millions of years ago. The collision triggered a wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars.NASAThe Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalog of peculiar galaxies produced by American astronomer Halton Christian Arp. In 1966, Arp published the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which contained photographs of 338 nearby galaxies that didn't fall into any of the classic categories of galaxy shapes. The 338 galaxies are presented in the atlas, which was originally published in 1966 by the California Institute of Technology.Halton Arp realized that astronomers understood little about how galaxies change over time, which led him to work on this project. This atlas was intended to provide images that would give astronomers data from which they could study the evolution of galaxies. Halton Arp later used the atlas as evidence in his debate on QSOs.Astronomers today recognize that Halton Arp developed an excellent atlas of interacting and merging galaxies. Many objects in the atlas are primarily referred to by their Arp number. Many of these objects (particularly Arp 220) are also used as spectral templates for studying high-redshift galaxies.Halton ArpHubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.The two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to Hubble's line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit.This picture was assembled from Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images taken with three separate filters. The blue, visible-light, and infrared filters are represented by the colors blue, green, and red, respectively.The above image was taken during October 2008 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to demonstrate the ability of its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 after some recent technical difficulties.NASA Hubble Space TelescopeX-rays from Chandra now reveal a ring of these black holes in the outer arms of the spiral structure. A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions.The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun.An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image.Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.Chandra X-ray ObservatoryInfrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring.These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame.NASA's Galaxy Evolution ExplorInfrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring.These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame.NASA's Spitzer Space TelescopeThis composite image of Arp 147 shows Chandra X-ray data in pink, Hubble optical data in red, green and blue, ultraviolet GALEX data in green and infrared Spitzer data in red.NASA
