Webb Reveals Intricate Details in the Remains of a Dying Star (NIRCam image)
There’s just one Ring Nebula to rule them all. Now Webb has turned its eye on this popular target, revealing the complexity of its structure in unprecedented detail — as well the possibility that the dying star at its center has a companion.
Hi David,
Welcome to the first NSAS Update for 2024. We have a big month this month and a new format for our newsletter with more information about a range of topics. First up is What’s On, Up and New!!
WHAT’S ON?
The following 10 NSAS events are on in the next 6 weeks so make sure you put aside the time if you wish to attend. As members, you have free access to these, so make sure you take advantage of them!
March is the perfect month for observing M42, the great Orion Nebula. High in the sky as sun sets, if you are a beginner or want to refesh your eyes on this easy to find target now is probably the perfect time. Able to be seen with your bare eyes (albeit it looks like a star at this distance) its a great to pull out the binoculars or any small scope and peer at this pristine object in our skies. It was my first object that I observed and I still remember the rush and the gasp that I uttered when I saw it.
The other object to look at this month is to turn your binoculars just a little bit further west and lower from M42 and you will see M45, or Pleiades a.k.a. the Seven Sisters. There are many stories to this cluster and most involve men chasing women across the sky. The Western Sydney University sites says that in Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. He was forced to hold up the sky for eternity, and was therefore unable to protect his daughters. To save the sisters from being raped by the hunter Orion, Zeus transformed them into stars.
The Dreamtime story from our First Nations peoples is quoted from yarn (yarn.com.au) and is that the Seven Sisters are ancestral beings, they were sky people who descended on the earth and were then pursued by a group of men. For the men it had been the first time they ever laid eyes on women and they were taken by desire. The women had managed to escape by beating them with their digging sticks.
A quick search on the internet will reveal others but the stories of old generally go along the same line.
March
Catalogue 1
Type
Common Name(s)
IC2602
Open Cluster
Southern Pleiades, Theta Carinae Cluster
NGC3532
Open Cluster
Firefly Party Cluster
NGC1976
Nebula
Orion Nebula,Trapezium Cluster
NGC2264
Open Cluster
Christmas Tree Cluster, Cone Nebula
IC2944
Nebula
Lambda Centauri, Running Chicken Nebula
NGC3293
Open Cluster
Gem Cluster
NGC2070
Nebula
Looped, Tarantula Nebula, True Lovers Knot
NGC2323
Open Cluster
Heart-Shaped Cluster
NGC2447
Open Cluster
Butterfly Cluster
NGC3242
Nebula
Eye Nebula, Ghost of Jupiter
NGC3918
Nebula
Blue Planetary
NGC1316
Galaxy
Fornax A
WHAT’S NEW?
Well – for me the newest thing is that I bought an upgrade for my telescope so I’m thrilled with that but that probably is not at the top of your interest list ¿.
The latest Sky and Telescope has some great articles this month. The one I found of great interest is “Adventures of a Millisecond Magnetar”. This article is well written and narrates the story of a large star that undergoes a supernova event. It explains well the forces at bay and how these affect the story’s main character, MM, the millisecond magnetar. MM becomes over time a rapidly rotating pulsar ejecting material at close to the speed of light also causing FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts) and then goes on to meet another neutron star. These two do their spinning dance and eventually merge forming gravitational waves. This is a great 6-page article to get a whirlwind armchair briefing on many of the more advanced processes in space. It is in April edition of the Sky&Telescope and whole heartedly recommend it.
A quick delve into the AI world asking for some of the latest things in sciences and space generated these interesting stories.
One of the most amazing discoveries is the Big Ring, a ring-shaped cosmic megastructure that's 1.3 billion light-years across. That's huge! It's so big that it challenges our current theories of the universe, which say that the universe should look the same in every direction above a certain scale. The Big Ring is one of several large structures that seem to break this rule, like the Giant Arc, which is 3.3 billion light-years long. These structures are so far away that we can only see them by using quasars, which are super bright objects that act like cosmic lamps. Scientists are wondering if these structures are connected somehow, and what they mean for our understanding of cosmology.
Another exciting development is the new catalog of X-ray sources that tests our cosmology in a different way. This catalog contains more than 5,000 galaxy clusters, which are groups of galaxies held together by gravity. Galaxy clusters are useful for studying dark matter and dark energy, which are mysterious substances that make up most of the universe. By measuring how galaxy clusters grow and change over time, astronomers can learn more about these substances and how they affect the expansion of the universe.
Speaking of expansion, did you know that the universe is expanding faster than theory predicts? This is a big puzzle for cosmologists, who use a model called Lambda CDM to describe how the universe formed and evolved. This model works well for explaining many observations, but it fails to match the measurements of the current expansion rate of the universe. There are different ways to measure this rate, and they don't agree with each other. Some scientists think that there might be something wrong with the measurements, while others think that there might be something wrong with the model. Maybe we need new physics to explain this discrepancy.
THERE'S A LOT MORE TO EXPLORE IN THE SPACE AND COSMOLOGICAL SCIENCES, LIKE HOW GALAXIES FORM AND EVOLVE IN THE COSMIC WEB, HOW DARK MATTER WOBBLES SPACE-TIME AROUND US, AND HOW ASTRONOMERS DIRECTLY IMAGE THE COSMIC WEB FOR THE FIRST TIME. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE, YOU CAN CHECK OUT THESE LINKS:
In last month newsletter I described a conundrum I had regarding an image of M8, the Lagoon Nebula and the fact that our 2-dimensional view of the area of Silicon exceeded that of Oxygen, when according to standard element creation theory, the oxygen should have been produced earlier and hence had longer in time to dissipate into space. My theory had been that the Lagoon Nebula has multiple stars (and star regions) in it, all in varying states of formation or annihilation and hence over the passage of time the chemical composition would be churned up anyway. On research it transpires that there are over 2500 star candidates which is our best effort at this time (although sources suggest more) and being a star forming region there would be generations of stars in this area.
However, I suspect that the answer I received from Ben Manuele is closer to the truth!
To summarize, the conditions for creating O III lines are considerably more extreme -- requiring much higher-energy photons -- than those for creating S II and H-alpha lines. The high-energy, short-wavelength ultraviolet photons which can give rise to O III will be scattered and absorbed more quickly in the circumstellar material than photons of lower energy, so the regions producing O III will be closer to the source of photons.
This seems more plausible and it also makes me realise the error in my thinking. The realisation is that we are only observing the Oxygen III where the energy of the photons interacting with the OIII are high enough. This is closer to the energy source, ie the stars at the centre of M8.
Well done Ben !!
TOUR OF ST IGNATIUS SCHOOL OBSERVATORY - RESCHEDULED
As many of you would be aware, we had to unfortunately reschedule the Tour of the St Ignatius Observatory due to the large rainfalls we had in February. We are currently in discussion with Bob Marsh and the School and hope to bring this on again in June.
