保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
2021年04月15日 The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Explanation: Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth’s Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo galaxy cluster about ...
ASA的南希·格蕾丝·罗曼太空望远镜将于本世纪20年代中期发射升空，届时它将为红外宇宙提供一个前所未有的窗口。该任务计划中的一项调查将利用引力的奇特之处来揭示太阳系以外的数千颗新行星。同样的调查还将提供迄今为止最好的机会，首次明确探测到孤零零的小黑洞。当一颗质量超过20个太阳的恒星耗尽其核心的核燃料，并在自身重量的作用下坍塌时，这些天体就被称为恒星质量黑洞。 黑洞具有强大的引力，连光都无法逃脱它们的魔爪。由于黑洞看不见，我们只能通过观察它们对周围环境的影响，间接地找到黑洞。在星系中心发现的超大质量黑洞，其质量是太阳的几百万倍，它们会扰乱附近恒星的轨道，偶尔还会将它们撕碎，造成可见的后果。 但天文学家认为，绝大多数恒星质量的黑洞要轻得多，它们周围没有任何东西可以提示我们它们的存在。罗曼望远镜将通过观察行星的引力如...
In April 2019, a black hole and its shadow were captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation. A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no lig...
2021年04月11日 When Black Holes Collide Video Credit & Copyright: Simulating Extreme Spacetimes Collaboration Explanation: What happens when two black holes collide? This extreme scenario occurs in the centers of many merging galaxies and multiple star systems. The featured video shows a computer animation of the final stages of such a merger, while highli...
2021年04月09日 Messier 106 Image Credit: NASA, Hubble Legacy Archive, Kitt Peak National Observatory; Amateur Data & Processing Copyright: Robert Gendler Explanation: Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mech...
This 2003 composite X-ray (blue and green) and optical (red) image of the active galaxy, NGC 1068, shows gas blowing away in a high-speed wind from the vicinity of a central supermassive black hole. Regions of intense star formation in the inner spiral arms of the galaxy are highlighted by both optical and X-ray emission. The elongated shape of the gas cloud...
Despite searching with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have no evidence that a distant black hole estimated to weigh between 3 billion and 100 billion times the mass of the Sun is anywhere to be found. This missing black hole should be in the enormous galaxy in the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 2261, which ...
2021年01月08日 NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby, Leonardo Orazi Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax C...
The solar system might be a lot hairier than we thought. This illustration shows Earth surrounded by theoretical filaments of dark matter called “hairs.” Dark matter is an invisible, mysterious substance that makes up about 27 percent of all matter and energy in the universe. The regular matter, which makes up everything we can see around us, is ...
What is a black hole? A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos. Matter and radiation fall in, but they ca...