Gimme That Ol’ Time Science Every Day!

Two of NASA's Great Observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, have teamed up to "weigh" the stars in several distant galaxies. One of these galaxies, among the most distant ever seen, appears to be unusually massive and mature for its place in the young universe. (Courtesy Space Telescope Science Institute and Spitzer Space Telescope.)

Pictures like this one always fascinate me. Astronomy gives us a chance to look at the universe in amazing and different ways. The most obvious is that we just get to look at pretty stuff. But, after you gaze for a while, you start to ask questions. They start out as small ones, like, “What am I seeing?” and “How far away is it?”

To answer those seemingly easy questions requires a lot of information. And getting that information is what makes astronomy so fascinating. The picture above is a gold mine of information. So, let’s start with “what am I seeing?”

Well, you’re seeing a field of the sky that is chock full of distant galaxies. Hubble Space Telescope looked at this area of the sky for a good long time, seeing more and more faint objects the longer it looked. This makes sense, since the longer it looked, the more light it could gather. The more light you gather from dim, distant objects, the easier it is to eventually see them. To see something a long ways away, you have to look for a long time.

The result of all this HST-type staring was an image called the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field.” The “deep” part means it shows stuff that is deep in space, farther away. And, as we are all taught in our first astronomy classes, farther away in space means “further back in time.” So, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (which I’ll now refer to as HUDF) is showing us galaxies as they looked when the universe was a mere baby, about 12 billion years ago.

Now, the interesting thing is that this image answered both questions at once. We now they’re galaxies in that image, and we know that they’re galaxies as they appeared in their youth, back when the first galaxies were being formed. That leads us to another question: “What happened in those baby galaxies ‘way back in the day?”

This is where the Spitzer Space Telescope comes in. It’s sensitive to infrared light. Are those galaxies giving off infrared light? Well, probably they were, but what Spitzer is really seeing is something a little more complex than the IR that’s given off by stuff like warm dust in between the stars.

Think of it this way: galaxies, even back then, can be hotbeds of star formation. And the births of stars gives off a lot of really hot radiation in the form of ultraviolet and other wavelengths of energetic light. Spitzer as well as Hubble zeroed in on one particular galaxy in the field to study its star-formation rate. They expected it to be active in creating new stars. Imagine their surprise when they found out it was bigger and much more mature (in terms of star formation)!

How did they know this galaxy was older than expected? Bigger, more mature stars give off infrared radiation that Spitzer’s ultra-sensitive detectors can “see.” Also, and this is very cool, the telescope saw wavelengths of light that indicate something really energetic is happening in the core of this very distant galaxy: a black hole is stirring things up and creating a lot of ruckus!

Now, to understand this last bit, it’s important to know that early galaxies should show at least some hot, young stars, and that black holes at the centers of galaxies are hallmarks of more mature galaxies. At the period of cosmic history that this galaxy existed, astronomers didn’t expect to see such a mature one with lots of hot, massive stars, and a black hole at its heart. So, this galaxy and its bulked-up form adds another piece to the puzzle of how galaxies were built and developed in the early universe.

Astronomers think most galaxies were built up through mergers of smaller galaxies. However, the discovery of this object means that at least a few galaxies formed quickly back in the early days, and were more complete earlier in history. It would have been a terrifically energetic explosion of starbirth that created this husky “teenage” galaxy way back then. The very quick births of huge stars in this galaxy could have helped reheat the universe very shortly after it cooled following the Big Bang.

See what you find out when you look at a picture and ask a few simple questions?

American Astronomical Society Statement on the Teaching of Evolution

The American Astronomical Society supports teaching evolution in our nation’s K-12 science classes. Evolution is a valid scientific theory for the origin of species that has been repeatedly tested and verified through observation, formulation of testable statements to explain those observations, and controlled experiments or additional observations to find out whether these ideas are right or wrong. A scientific theory is not speculation or a guess — scientific theories are unifying concepts that explain the physical universe.

Astronomical observations show that the Universe is many billions of years old (see the AAS publication, “An Ancient Universe,” cited below), that nuclear reactions in stars have produced the chemical elements over time, and recent observations show that gravity has led to the formation of many planets in our Galaxy. The early history of the solar system is being explored by astronomical observation and by direct visits to solar system objects. Fossils, radiological measurements, and changes in DNA trace the growth of the tree of life on Earth. The theory of evolution, like the theories of gravity, plate tectonics, and Big Bang cosmology, explains, unifies, and predicts natural phenomena. Scientific theories provide a proven framework for improving our understanding of the world.

The AAS supports the positions taken by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers’ Association, the American Geophysical Union, the American
Chemical Society, and the American Association of Physics Teachers on the teaching of evolution. The AAS also supports the National Science Education Standards: they emphasize the importance of scientific methods as well as
articulating well-established scientific theories.

Suggested reading: The Ancient Universe: How Astronomers Know the Vast Scale
of Cosmic Time.

Published by the American Astronomical
Society.

Thor’s Helmet: A Hot Star by Any Other Name

Thor's Helmet (Courtesy NOAO)

Astronomers love to give evocative names to the objects they observe. That’s why we hear about things like the Ring Nebula and the Cat’s-Eye Nebula. Sure, the things they describe look like the name, although the monickers don’t always have much to do with the intrinsic nature of the object.

I recently ran across a really exciting-looking image of a bubble of gas being blown out by a Wolf-Rayet star. WRs are extremely hot (25,000-50,000 K), energetic stars that blast their outer layers away at thousands and thousands of miles per second. incredibly hot (25,000-50,000K) and expel their outer layers of gas at tremendous velocities (thousands of kilometers per second). It’s about 10,000 light-years away, but because it’s so bright and energetic, we can see it very nicely.

A Time Away

I spent last week at a planetarium conference in Denver. We had a wonderful time visiting with clients from around the western U.S. and seeing the latest and greatest in planetarium, fulldome technology.

The planetarium is one of those places in the public mind that’s associated with museum visits or school visits or, to our great dismay sometimes, only thought of as that place they spoofed in “South Park.” But, it ain’t your father’s planetarium any more. The domed theaters we all grew up in, learning about the stars and planets and galaxies, are changing as technology changes. Sure, they still project stars. Some do it with the old opto-mechanical “ant in the middle of the room” equipment, usually supplemented by special slide projectors to help create immersive environments like the surface of a planet or the vision of an undersea environment on another planet. Others do it with video projection systems, and we saw a lot of those kinds of system at the meeting last week.

I write planetarium shows and of course my husband produces them. Video production is right up our alley, and lets us show my scripts and his music and the visuals of the cosmos to great advantage. And of course we’re immersed in video production now. It’s a great feeling to know that the stories I tell about astronomy can be visualized the way I see them in my mind’s eye.

But, you ask, what about the old style of shows? The constellation identifications? The great lectures showing the latest images from HST or Spitzer or other observatories? The good news is — they’re still possible! Nothing has changed there. Well… the technology has. And the skill sets to make presentations under the dome are new ones for many planetarians. But they’ll cope and grow and embrace them. If any of the talks I heard last week are any indication, the planetarium world’s evolution will be scary, exciting, and maybe even fun! (Once we learn those skills!)

Rough Week

This has been an astoundingly stressful week for a lot of people. Those of us not directly affected by Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath have gone about our lives with the daily news reports echoing in our minds. It’s hard to believe this is happening, and that the problems are so widespread. So, take a moment out from your websurfing to send help if you can.

Stargazing-wise, some of the nicest nights for Northern Hemisphere skywatchers (weather-wise) are coming up with the rise of September. So, take a break from whatever you’re doing and step out tonight after dark and check out the stars. The other day Astronomy Picture of the Day had a great picture of the double star Albireo in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. You can spot this beautiful double star with good binoculars or a small telescope, right at the foot of Cygnus. Check it out!