Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements – like iron, oxygen, and silicon – that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

A new composite image of this region contains X-rays from Chandra and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton mission (shown in blue) as well as radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (shown in red) in South Africa. These have been combined with an optical image from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). The plane of the galaxy runs horizontally from left to right in the image, and the central black hole is off to the left of the image.

The evidence for the new supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveals a “blob” of X-ray emission that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within the larger cloud of expanding gas.

The location of this suspected supernova remnant in the image is labeled with a circle.

It is in a bubble of gas that has had electrons stripped away from hydrogen – called an “H II region” – surrounding a massive, young star. This bubble is a bright source of radio emission called Sagittarius C.

If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old. Previously, observations with NASA’s now-retired SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) mission had shown evidence for an expanding shell of gas surrounding Sagittarius C. This gave astronomers a hint that a stellar explosion had occurred in the same spot.

The long filaments seen in the radio image are caused by energetic particles travelling along magnetic fields that are mostly directed perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

The nuclear fusion engines of stars create elements from hydrogen and helium that were abundant at the beginning of the universe. When stars explode at the end of their lives as supernovae, they send these newly synthesized elements into interstellar space and provide material for the next generation of stars and planets.

The team of astronomers searched the X-ray data for signs of increased amounts of key elements in the remnant, which would have been caused by the stellar explosion blasting them into space. While they did not see an enhancement, this could imply that the stellar debris has already mixed with the surrounding gas.

An alternative explanation for the X-ray blob is that the hot gas comes from a collection of massive stars in the region. The authors of the recent study don’t think this explanation is likely, because the X-ray emission from the blob is more than ten times brighter than the X-ray emission of large, known stellar clusters with bright, massive stars.

An additional image shows data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope added to the X-ray and radio data. The light blue color represents infrared light from gas in the H II region, and the darker blue depicts X-rays from the supernova remnant candidate, on the right side of the image. X-rays near the center of the image are associated with the H II region, possibly caused by material blown away by massive stars that has heated gas to millions of degrees, producing X-rays.

The study’s authors are Zhenlin Zhu and Mark Morris of the University of California, Los Angeles; Gabriele Ponti of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics; and Ping Zhou of Nanjing University in China.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of colorful, overlapping clouds, which suggests to astronomers that a supernova remnant may be buried in gas near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Set against a backdrop packed with distant stars and other specks of light are two distinct, overlapping clouds. The larger, visually dominant cloud, is red and multifaceted. It has an irregular shape, and features patches of different textures, including pockets that resemble wispy smoke, tangles of faint red veins, and clear streaking lines. This large cloud of expanding gas represents radio data from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

Overlapping with that red cloud is a cloudy blue blob representing X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers suggest that this blue blob of X-ray emissions is the remains of a massive star destroyed by a supernova.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

The post NASA’s Chandra Discovers Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center appeared first on NASA Science.

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements – like iron, oxygen, and silicon – that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

A new composite image of this region contains X-rays from Chandra and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton mission (shown in blue) as well as radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (shown in red) in South Africa. These have been combined with an optical image from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). The plane of the galaxy runs horizontally from left to right in the image, and the central black hole is off to the left of the image.

The evidence for the new supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveals a “blob” of X-ray emission that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within the larger cloud of expanding gas.

The location of this suspected supernova remnant in the image is labeled with a circle.

It is in a bubble of gas that has had electrons stripped away from hydrogen – called an “H II region” – surrounding a massive, young star. This bubble is a bright source of radio emission called Sagittarius C.

If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old. Previously, observations with NASA’s now-retired SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) mission had shown evidence for an expanding shell of gas surrounding Sagittarius C. This gave astronomers a hint that a stellar explosion had occurred in the same spot.

The long filaments seen in the radio image are caused by energetic particles travelling along magnetic fields that are mostly directed perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

The nuclear fusion engines of stars create elements from hydrogen and helium that were abundant at the beginning of the universe. When stars explode at the end of their lives as supernovae, they send these newly synthesized elements into interstellar space and provide material for the next generation of stars and planets.

The team of astronomers searched the X-ray data for signs of increased amounts of key elements in the remnant, which would have been caused by the stellar explosion blasting them into space. While they did not see an enhancement, this could imply that the stellar debris has already mixed with the surrounding gas.

An alternative explanation for the X-ray blob is that the hot gas comes from a collection of massive stars in the region. The authors of the recent study don’t think this explanation is likely, because the X-ray emission from the blob is more than ten times brighter than the X-ray emission of large, known stellar clusters with bright, massive stars.

An additional image shows data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope added to the X-ray and radio data. The light blue color represents infrared light from gas in the H II region, and the darker blue depicts X-rays from the supernova remnant candidate, on the right side of the image. X-rays near the center of the image are associated with the H II region, possibly caused by material blown away by massive stars that has heated gas to millions of degrees, producing X-rays.

The study’s authors are Zhenlin Zhu and Mark Morris of the University of California, Los Angeles; Gabriele Ponti of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics; and Ping Zhou of Nanjing University in China.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of colorful, overlapping clouds, which suggests to astronomers that a supernova remnant may be buried in gas near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Set against a backdrop packed with distant stars and other specks of light are two distinct, overlapping clouds. The larger, visually dominant cloud, is red and multifaceted. It has an irregular shape, and features patches of different textures, including pockets that resemble wispy smoke, tangles of faint red veins, and clear streaking lines. This large cloud of expanding gas represents radio data from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

Overlapping with that red cloud is a cloudy blue blob representing X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers suggest that this blue blob of X-ray emissions is the remains of a massive star destroyed by a supernova.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

A new type of gamma-ray sensor developed by NASA, called AstroPix, will take part in a robotic arm demonstration on the agency’s upcoming Fly Foundational Robots mission, set to launch in late 2027.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Scientists observe them coming from events like lightning in Earth’s atmosphere, powerful solar flares from our Sun, and cosmic collisions in distant galaxies. The sensors on the AstroPix technology demonstration are designed to measure gamma rays between 20,000 and 700,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light’s energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts.

Current NASA missions, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, also observe gamma rays, including those with even higher energies.

But for energies between 500,000 to 1 million electron volts, existing detectors are less sensitive. This range is where many powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest. It’s also where astronomers expect to see the strongest glow from the most massive and distant active galaxies powered by black holes. By stacking AstroPix detectors in future missions, scientists could bridge this gap and improve observations of these cosmic objects to better understand the processes that create and drive them.

“The Fly Foundational Robots spacecraft is also a technology demonstration, so the projects were a good fit for each other,” said Dan Violette, an AstroPix team member and post-doctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We need to thoroughly test AstroPix’s performance before we can use the sensors in future science missions. We’ve flown comparable technologies on a scientific balloon mission, and the current prototype eventually will be part of a sounding rocket payload. Many of those flight opportunities only reach near space, though. It’s not often that technology demonstrations like ours can find a ride into orbit.”

Each AstroPix chip contains four silicon pixel gamma-ray detectors, and each detector incorporates 1,225 pixels. The chips function similarly to the sensors in cell phone cameras.

The AstroPix Satellite Technology dEmonstration Payload, also known as A-STEP, will be hosted within the Fly Foundational Robots mission’s Orbital Replacement Unit, a movable module built by Rocket Lab Robotics. Rocket Lab Robotics also will provide a robotic arm that will pick up and reposition the unit during flight and perform in-orbit operations as part of a robotic servicing demonstration. The A-STEP payload will collect its data following the repositioning. Astro Digital will provide the spacecraft.

The Orbital Replacement Unit was designed to support power and data interfaces for a payload, but the original plan called for the robotic arm to reposition the module without one. As mission development progressed, however, the Fly Foundational Robots team identified an opportunity to further maximize the mission’s value by integrating an additional technology demonstration that could fit within the 11.8-inch (30-centimeter) cube.

“The unit already had the volume, power, and data needed to support the AstroPix team’s design,” said Bo Naasz, senior technical lead, In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One of our major goals with Fly Foundational Robots is to demonstrate robotic changeout of payloads in orbit, enabling upgrades or improvements to satellites and space instruments at a fraction of the cost of a full mission. Allowing AstroPix to complete its own technology demonstration in orbit is a bonus.”

The AstroPix team is working to deliver their hardware this September, and it will be integrated into the Fly Foundational Robots payload before final integration onto the spacecraft. The Orbital Replacement Unit will hold the chips and all the associated electronics needed to provide power, and collect and transmit data during flight.

NASA’s Fly Foundational Robots mission is funded through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s ISAM portfolio, managed at NASA Goddard. Rocket Lab Robotics will supply the mission’s robotic arm system through a NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase III award. Astro Digital will host the orbital flight test of the arm through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The development of AstroPix was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, through the agency’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program, and funded through the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship.

To learn more, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3R28tWE

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post NASA Robotic Tech Demo Will Advance Prototype Gamma-Ray Detectors appeared first on NASA Science.

A new type of gamma-ray sensor developed by NASA, called AstroPix, will take part in a robotic arm demonstration on the agency’s upcoming Fly Foundational Robots mission, set to launch in late 2027.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Scientists observe them coming from events like lightning in Earth’s atmosphere, powerful solar flares from our Sun, and cosmic collisions in distant galaxies. The sensors on the AstroPix technology demonstration are designed to measure gamma rays between 20,000 and 700,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light’s energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts.

Current NASA missions, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, also observe gamma rays, including those with even higher energies.

But for energies between 500,000 to 1 million electron volts, existing detectors are less sensitive. This range is where many powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest. It’s also where astronomers expect to see the strongest glow from the most massive and distant active galaxies powered by black holes. By stacking AstroPix detectors in future missions, scientists could bridge this gap and improve observations of these cosmic objects to better understand the processes that create and drive them.

“The Fly Foundational Robots spacecraft is also a technology demonstration, so the projects were a good fit for each other,” said Dan Violette, an AstroPix team member and post-doctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We need to thoroughly test AstroPix’s performance before we can use the sensors in future science missions. We’ve flown comparable technologies on a scientific balloon mission, and the current prototype eventually will be part of a sounding rocket payload. Many of those flight opportunities only reach near space, though. It’s not often that technology demonstrations like ours can find a ride into orbit.”

Each AstroPix chip contains four silicon pixel gamma-ray detectors, and each detector incorporates 1,225 pixels. The chips function similarly to the sensors in cell phone cameras.

The AstroPix Satellite Technology dEmonstration Payload, also known as A-STEP, will be hosted within the Fly Foundational Robots mission’s Orbital Replacement Unit, a movable module built by Rocket Lab Robotics. Rocket Lab Robotics also will provide a robotic arm that will pick up and reposition the unit during flight and perform in-orbit operations as part of a robotic servicing demonstration. The A-STEP payload will collect its data following the repositioning. Astro Digital will provide the spacecraft.

The Orbital Replacement Unit was designed to support power and data interfaces for a payload, but the original plan called for the robotic arm to reposition the module without one. As mission development progressed, however, the Fly Foundational Robots team identified an opportunity to further maximize the mission’s value by integrating an additional technology demonstration that could fit within the 11.8-inch (30-centimeter) cube.

“The unit already had the volume, power, and data needed to support the AstroPix team’s design,” said Bo Naasz, senior technical lead, In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One of our major goals with Fly Foundational Robots is to demonstrate robotic changeout of payloads in orbit, enabling upgrades or improvements to satellites and space instruments at a fraction of the cost of a full mission. Allowing AstroPix to complete its own technology demonstration in orbit is a bonus.”

The AstroPix team is working to deliver their hardware this September, and it will be integrated into the Fly Foundational Robots payload before final integration onto the spacecraft. The Orbital Replacement Unit will hold the chips and all the associated electronics needed to provide power, and collect and transmit data during flight.

NASA’s Fly Foundational Robots mission is funded through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s ISAM portfolio, managed at NASA Goddard. Rocket Lab Robotics will supply the mission’s robotic arm system through a NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase III award. Astro Digital will host the orbital flight test of the arm through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The development of AstroPix was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, through the agency’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program, and funded through the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship.

To learn more, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3R28tWE

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Engineers completed installation of Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft into a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on Tuesday, June 9, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Launch is anticipated later this month.

NASA contracted Katalyst to build and launch LINK to raise the altitude of the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

Our planet’s atmosphere creates drag for spacecraft in low Earth orbit, gradually reducing their altitudes if they don’t have propulsion systems to counteract the effect.

Recent solar activity magnified this effect on Swift, and its orbit decayed faster than anticipated.

Based on the orbital and programmatic needs of the mission, Katalyst selected the air-launched Pegasus XL as the best means of reaching the observatory in time to perform the boost maneuver.

Northrop Grumman will launch the rocket using Stargazer, its modified L-1011 aircraft.

NASA has previously used similar versions of this launch vehicle to deploy its ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) and NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) spacecraft.

Next, Northrop Grumman engineers will attach Pegasus XL to Stargazer, which will carry it from NASA Wallops to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, for launch.

Learn more about the Swift boost at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/swift-boost-mission/

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post Rocket Integration Complete for Katalyst-NASA Swift Boost appeared first on NASA Science.

The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces.

A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb — the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot — the research team has identified multiple lines of evidence, all of which support the interpretation that GLIMPSE-17775 is a supermassive black hole enveloped in a dense cocoon of partially ionized gas, a model referred to as the BH* (black hole star) scenario. A paper describing the results was published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” said Kokorev, lead author of the study. “With GLIMPSE-17775 we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”

Image: Abell S1063 with Pullout of GLIMPSE-17775 (NIRCam Image)

Connecting puzzle pieces

Soon after Webb first began science operations, it discovered a new, mysterious type of object in the very early universe – abundant red objects that emerged about 600 million years after the big bang. Scientists have explored multiple explanations for these little red dots, including the black hole star scenario.

A set of fortunate circumstances brought about this new, elaborate spectrum of a little red dot. The little red dot that would come to be known as GLIMPSE-17775 was fortunately included in Webb’s imaging and spectroscopy efforts for a project that sought to look for Population III stars and faint galaxies in galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This little red dot is more distant than the galaxy cluster and magnified by gravitational lensing. (GLIMPSE-17775 has a cosmological redshift of 3.5, meaning it existed about 1.8 billion years after the big bang.)

While Webb provided a 30-hour spectrum of the little red dot, the effect of gravitational lensing made it equivalent to 80 hours of telescope time. This combination of Webb’s infrared sensitivity and nature’s own “magnifying glass” amplified the amount of detail that could be gleaned from GLIMPSE-17775. The result was more than 40 spectral lines from this small, red source, which is the most detailed little red dot spectrum to date.

“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”

The spectroscopic data collected by Webb contains multiple lines of evidence that support the interpretation that little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole star: a rapidly accreting, or growing, black hole enveloped in a dense gas cocoon, which is reprocessing the light emitted from near the black hole and producing the features seen in the spectrum.

Image: Evidence of a ‘Black Hole Star’

Lines of evidence

Among the 40-plus lines that the team detected in GLIMPSE-17775’s spectrum were various independent indicators that all align with the BH* scenario. For example, the team found that many of the spectral lines, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and helium, do not fit a simple model of a rotating gas cloud. Instead, the best fit model includes a broadening effect known as electron scattering, a telltale sign that a dense, layered gas cocoon is enshrouding this source. 

The strength and ratios of certain lines to each other, most notably the 16 iron lines that compose what the team has dubbed an “iron forest” and certain oxygen lines, require a high-energy source to produce them, like a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, astronomers noted the fluorescence and absorption of helium in the spectrum, both of which individually suggest that there is a dense medium enveloping a powerful source.

The BH* scenario not only fits GLIMPSE-17775; it also accounts for why most little red dots are faint in X-rays, since any such emission is likely absorbed by the dense gas cocoon.

One missing element of the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece is the part of the spectrum that would reveal what’s known as a Balmer break, or a strong dip in the emitted light that’s a signature characteristic of little red dots. To build a more comprehensive understanding of this little red dot, the team incorporated ancillary data from two observing programs that used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: the Frontier Fields and BUFFALO (Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations) programs.

The Webb and Hubble data together help explain why the Balmer break is weaker than what typically is found in other little red dots: A giant host galaxy is surrounding GLIMPSE-17775. Although a little red dot’s host galaxy is not something that has been usually seen at such scale before, it isn’t inconsistent with the dense gas cocoon model. The black hole star model of little red dots attributes excess blue light to stars in the host galaxy.

When Webb first discovered little red dots, some researchers thought these objects had “broken cosmology,” unsure how galaxies could have grown so big so quickly in the early universe to account for all this light coming from their stars. However, the team believes the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece fits nicely in the existing framework of the universe’s evolutionary history, because black hole masses don’t need to be as high in order to explain the broad emission lines.

“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” said Kokorev. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.” 

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

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The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces.

A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb — the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot — the research team has identified multiple lines of evidence, all of which support the interpretation that GLIMPSE-17775 is a supermassive black hole enveloped in a dense cocoon of partially ionized gas, a model referred to as the BH* (black hole star) scenario. A paper describing the results was published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” said Kokorev, lead author of the study. “With GLIMPSE-17775 we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”

Image: Abell S1063 with Pullout of GLIMPSE-17775 (NIRCam Image)

Connecting puzzle pieces

Soon after Webb first began science operations, it discovered a new, mysterious type of object in the very early universe – abundant red objects that emerged about 600 million years after the big bang. Scientists have explored multiple explanations for these little red dots, including the black hole star scenario.

A set of fortunate circumstances brought about this new, elaborate spectrum of a little red dot. The little red dot that would come to be known as GLIMPSE-17775 was fortunately included in Webb’s imaging and spectroscopy efforts for a project that sought to look for Population III stars and faint galaxies in galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This little red dot is more distant than the galaxy cluster and magnified by gravitational lensing. (GLIMPSE-17775 has a cosmological redshift of 3.5, meaning it existed about 1.8 billion years after the big bang.)

While Webb provided a 30-hour spectrum of the little red dot, the effect of gravitational lensing made it equivalent to 80 hours of telescope time. This combination of Webb’s infrared sensitivity and nature’s own “magnifying glass” amplified the amount of detail that could be gleaned from GLIMPSE-17775. The result was more than 40 spectral lines from this small, red source, which is the most detailed little red dot spectrum to date.

“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”

The spectroscopic data collected by Webb contains multiple lines of evidence that support the interpretation that little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole star: a rapidly accreting, or growing, black hole enveloped in a dense gas cocoon, which is reprocessing the light emitted from near the black hole and producing the features seen in the spectrum.

Image: Evidence of a ‘Black Hole Star’

Lines of evidence

Among the 40-plus lines that the team detected in GLIMPSE-17775’s spectrum were various independent indicators that all align with the BH* scenario. For example, the team found that many of the spectral lines, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and helium, do not fit a simple model of a rotating gas cloud. Instead, the best fit model includes a broadening effect known as electron scattering, a telltale sign that a dense, layered gas cocoon is enshrouding this source. 

The strength and ratios of certain lines to each other, most notably the 16 iron lines that compose what the team has dubbed an “iron forest” and certain oxygen lines, require a high-energy source to produce them, like a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, astronomers noted the fluorescence and absorption of helium in the spectrum, both of which individually suggest that there is a dense medium enveloping a powerful source.

The BH* scenario not only fits GLIMPSE-17775; it also accounts for why most little red dots are faint in X-rays, since any such emission is likely absorbed by the dense gas cocoon.

One missing element of the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece is the part of the spectrum that would reveal what’s known as a Balmer break, or a strong dip in the emitted light that’s a signature characteristic of little red dots. To build a more comprehensive understanding of this little red dot, the team incorporated ancillary data from two observing programs that used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: the Frontier Fields and BUFFALO (Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations) programs.

The Webb and Hubble data together help explain why the Balmer break is weaker than what typically is found in other little red dots: A giant host galaxy is surrounding GLIMPSE-17775. Although a little red dot’s host galaxy is not something that has been usually seen at such scale before, it isn’t inconsistent with the dense gas cocoon model. The black hole star model of little red dots attributes excess blue light to stars in the host galaxy.

When Webb first discovered little red dots, some researchers thought these objects had “broken cosmology,” unsure how galaxies could have grown so big so quickly in the early universe to account for all this light coming from their stars. However, the team believes the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece fits nicely in the existing framework of the universe’s evolutionary history, because black hole masses don’t need to be as high in order to explain the broad emission lines.

“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” said Kokorev. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.” 

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

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The LINK robotic servicing spacecraft, built by Katalyst Space and designed to capture and boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory arrived at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, June 5.

Inside NASA Wallops’ Horizontal Integration Facility, Northrop Grumman engineers will install the satellite into one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets ahead of launch.

All spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience drag caused by our planet’s atmosphere. As a result, satellites without propulsion systems to counteract this effect gradually lose altitude and fall toward Earth.

Recent increased solar activity magnified the impact of atmospheric drag on Swift, causing it to sink faster than anticipated.

NASA contracted Katalyst to boost the 21-year-old observatory back to a higher altitude, pioneering a new servicing capability for the nation’s spacecraft fleet and allowing Swift to resume science observations.

After loading LINK into the Pegasus XL, Northrop Grumman will attach the rocket to the bottom of Stargazer, the company’s modified L-1011 aircraft.

Stargazer will deploy Pegasus XL from above Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, later this month. The rocket will deliver the LINK spacecraft to an orbit where it can reach Swift.

As activities on the ground have raced to get LINK to Swift, the observatory team has been continuously making Swift’s orientation more aerodynamic to preserve altitude.

Learn more about the Swift mission at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post Robotic Spacecraft for Swift Boost Mission Arrives at NASA Wallops appeared first on NASA Science.

The big bang has causality issues, particularly the "horizon problem." I critique suggested solutions like cosmic inflation and negentropy, arguing that they require unproven concepts. The Creator, as described in the Bible, provides a coherent explanation without causality violations, in contrast with those scientific storytelling fairy tales for adults.

I premiere my 2013 video lecture "8 Reasons Why Evolution is Foolish" on YouTube. I present 8 reasons why evolution is impossible. I cover questions on cosmogony, the origin of the universe, the stars and galaxies, the Earth, and the origin of life.

I contrast two views on the origin of the universe: the big bang theory and the Genesis creation account. I highlight how many evangelicals now support the big bang, reflecting a shift in beliefs rejecting the historical Genesis narrative on concepts like original sin and redemption.

God created all space, time, and energy over six ordinary days less than 8,000 years ago. I discuss the physics of the Day 1 of that, with the earth formed from a sphere of water and the creation of all light, including the thermal radiation called the cosmic microwave background.

Water is essential for life, existing in solid, liquid, and gas states, primarily due to its unique molecular structure (H2O) and the angle of its hydrogen bonds. Found in the habitable zone around stars, Earth’s water supports diverse life and is used by the Creator to explain eternal life.