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Astronomers Measure Precise Mass of a Binary Brown Dwarf
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By NASA
This illustration shows a red, early-universe dwarf galaxy that hosts a rapidly feeding black hole at its center. Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers have discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. It is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani A rapidly feeding black hole at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early universe, shown in this artist’s concept, may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive black holes in general.
Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole just 1.5 billion years after the big bang. The black hole is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early universe.
The black hole, called LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey, a catalog resulting from some 4.6 million Chandra observations. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By following up with Webb, astronomers could use the observatory’s unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint counterpart emissions, which led to the discovery of the black hole.
The speed and size of these outflows led the team to infer that a substantial fraction of the mass growth of LID-568 may have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion.
LID-568 appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times its Eddington limit. This limit relates to the maximum amount of light that material surrounding a black hole can emit, as well as how fast it can absorb matter, such that its inward gravitational force and outward pressure generated from the heat of the compressed, infalling matter remain in balance.
These results provide new insights into the formation of supermassive black holes from smaller black hole “seeds,” which current theories suggest arise either from the death of the universe’s first stars (light seeds) or the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). Until now, these theories lacked observational confirmation.
The new discovery suggests that “a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feeding, regardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed,” said International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh, who led the research team.
A paper describing these results (“A super-Eddington-accreting black hole ~1.5 Gyr after the Big Bang observed with JWST”) appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.
About the Missions
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center 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.
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).
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
News Media Contact
Elizabeth Laundau
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC
202-923-0167
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
Proba-3 is such an ambitious mission that it needs more than one single spacecraft to succeed. In order for Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft observe the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, the disk-bearing Occulter spacecraft must block out the fiery solar disk. This means Proba-3’s Occulter ends up facing the Sun continuously, making it a valuable platform for science in its own right.
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By European Space Agency
An international team of astronomers has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to detect the first brown dwarf candidates outside the Milky Way in the star cluster NGC 602.
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By NASA
Eclipsing binary stars point the way to exoplanets and many other discoveries. Be one of the first to join the new Eclipsing Binary Patrol project and help discover them! NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Eclipsing binaries are special pairs of stars that cross in front of one another as they orbit—stars that take turns blocking one another from our view. At Eclipsing Binary Patrol, the newest NASA-funded citizen science project, you’ll have a chance to help discover these unusual pairs of objects.
In Eclipsing Binary Patrol, you’ll work with real data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission. TESS collects a lot of information! But computers sometimes struggle to tell when the data show us something unimportant, like background noise or objects that aren’t stars. With your help, we can identify the correct targets and gain deeper insights into the behavior of double star systems.
“I’ve never worked as a professional astronomer, but being part of the Eclipsing Binary Patrol allows me to work with real data and contribute to actual discoveries,” said Aline Fornear, a volunteer from Brazil. “It’s exciting beyond words to know that my efforts are helping with the understanding of star systems so far away, and potentially new worlds, too!”
As a volunteer at Eclipsing Binary Patrol, your work will help confirm when a particular target is indeed an eclipsing binary, verify its orbital period, and ensure the target is the true source of the detected eclipses. You’ll be essential in distinguishing genuine discoveries from false signals. To get involved, visit our page on the Zooniverse platform and start sciencing!
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Last Updated Sep 05, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
6 min read
Quantum Scale Sensors used to Measure Planetary Scale Magnetic Fields
Magnetic fields are everywhere in our solar system. They originate from the Sun, planets, and moons, and are carried throughout interplanetary space by solar wind. This is precisely why magnetometers—devices used to measure magnetic fields—are flown on almost all missions in space to benefit the Earth, Planetary, and Heliophysics science communities, and ultimately enrich knowledge for all humankind. These instruments can remotely probe the interior of a planetary body to provide insight into its internal composition, structure, dynamics, and even evolution based on the magnetic history frozen into the body’s crustal rock layers. Magnetometers can even discover hidden oceans within our solar system and help determine their salinity, thereby providing insight into the potential habitability of these icy worlds.
Left: The magnetic field of Jupiter provides insight into its interior composition, structure, dynamics, and even its evolutionary history. Right: Image of the first prototype 4H-SiC solid-state magnetometer sensor die (2mm by 2mm) developed by NASA-GRC. Each gold rectangle or square on the surface represents an individual sensor, the smallest being 10 microns by 10 microns. Fluxgates are the most widely used magnetometers for missions in space due to their proven performance and simplicity. However, the conventional size, weight, and power (SWaP) of fluxgate instruments can restrict them from being used on small platforms like CubeSats and sometimes limit the number of sensors that can be used on a spacecraft for inter-sensor calibration, redundancy, and spacecraft magnetic field removal. Traditionally, a long boom is used to distance the fluxgate magnetometers from the contaminate magnetic field generated by the spacecraft, itself, and at least two sensors are used to characterize the falloff of this field contribution so it can be removed from the measurements. Fluxgates also do not provide an absolute measurement, meaning that they need to be routinely calibrated in space through spacecraft rolls, which can be time and resource intensive.
An SMD-funded team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has partnered with NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio to prototype a new magnetometer called the silicon carbide (SiC) magnetometer, or SiCMag, that could change the way magnetic fields are measured in space. SiCMag uses a solid-state sensor made of a silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor. Inside the SiC sensor are quantum centers—intentionally introduced defects or irregularities at an atomic scale—that give rise to a magnetoresistance signal that can be detected by monitoring changes in the sensor’s electrical current, which indicate changes in the strength and direction of the external magnetic field. This new technology has the potential to be incredibly sensitive, and due to its large bandgap (i.e., the energy required to free an electron from its bound state so it can participate in electrical conduction), is capable of operating in the wide range of temperature extremes and harsh radiation environments commonly encountered in space.
Team member David Spry of NASA Glenn indicates, “Not only is the SiC material great for magnetic field sensing, but here at NASA Glenn we’re further developing robust SiC electronics that operate in hot environments far beyond the upper temperature limitations of silicon electronics. These SiC-based technologies will someday enable long-duration robotic scientific exploration of the 460 °C Venus surface.”
SiCMag is also very small— the sensor area is only 0.1 x 0.1 mm and the compensation coils are smaller than a penny. Consequently, dozens of SiCMag sensors can easily be incorporated on a spacecraft to better remove the complex contaminate magnetic field generated by the spacecraft, reducing the need for a long boom to distance the sensors from the spacecraft, like implemented on most spacecraft, including Psyche (see figure below).
The magnetic field lines associated with the Psyche spacecraft, modeled from over 200 individual magnetic sources. Removing this magnetic field contribution from the measurements conventionally requires the use of two fluxgate sensors on a long boom. Incorporating 4 or more SiCMag sensors in such a scenario would significantly reduce the size of the boom required, or even remove the need for a boom completely. Image Credit: This image was adopted from https://science.nasa.gov/resource/magnetic-field-of-the-psyche-spacecraft/ SiCMag has several advantages when compared to fluxgates and other types of heritage magnetometers including those based on optically pumped atomic vapor. SiCMag is a simple instrument that doesn’t rely on optics or high-frequency components, which are sensitive to temperature variations. SiCMag’s low SWaP also allows for accommodation on small platforms such as CubeSats, enabling simultaneous spatial and temporal magnetic field measurements not possible with single large-scale spacecraft. This capability will enable planetary magnetic field mapping and space weather monitoring by constellations of CubeSats. Multiplatform measurements would also be very valuable on the surface of the Moon and Mars for crustal magnetic field mapping, composition identification, and magnetic history investigation of these bodies.
SiCMag has a true zero-field magnetic sensing ability (i.e., SiCMag can measure extremely weak magnetic fields), which is unattainable with most conventional atomic vapor magnetometers due to the requisite minimum magnetic field needed for the sensor to operate. And because the spin-carrying electrons in SiCMag are tied up in the quantum centers, they won’t escape the sensor, meaning they are well-suited for decades-long journeys to the ice-giants or to the edges of the heliosphere. This capability is also an advantage of SiCMag’s optical equivalent sibling, OPuS-MAGNM, an optically pumped solid state quantum magnetometer developed by Hannes Kraus and matured by Andreas Gottscholl of the JPL solid-state magnetometry group. SiCMag has the advantage of being extremely simple, while OPuS-MAGNM promises to have lower noise characteristics, but uses complex optical components.
According to Dr. Andreas Gottscholl, “SiCMag and OPuS-MAGNM are very similar, actually. Progress in one sensor system translates directly into benefits for the other. Therefore, enhancements in design and electronics advance both projects, effectively doubling the impact of our efforts while we are still flexible for different applications.”
SiCMag has the ability to self-calibrate due to its absolute sensing capability, which is a significant advantage in the remote space environment. SiCMag uses a spectroscopic calibration technique that atomic vapor magnetometers also leverage called magnetic resonance (in the case of SiCMag, the magnetic resonance is electrically detected) to measure the precession frequency of electrons associated with the quantum centers, which is directly related to the magnetic field in which the sensor is immersed. This relationship is a fundamental physical constant in nature that doesn’t change as a function of time or temperature, making the response ideal for calibration of the sensor’s measurements. “If we are successful in achieving the sought-out sensitivity improvement we anticipate using isotopically purer materials, SiC could change the way magnetometry is typically performed in space due to the instrument’s attractive SWaP, robustness, and self-calibration ability,” says JPL’s Dr. Corey Cochrane, principal investigator of the SiCMag technology.
The 3-axis 3D printed electromagnet – no larger than the size of a US penny – is used to modulate and maintain a region of zero magnetic field around our 0.1 mm x 0.1 mm 4H-SiC solid-state sensor. NASA has been funding this team’s solid-state quantum magnetometer sensor research through its PICASSO (Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations) program since 2016. A variety of domestic partners from industry and academia also support this research, including NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Penn State University, University of Iowa, QuantCAD LLC, as well as international partners such as Japan’s Quantum Materials and Applications Research Center (QUARC) and Infineon Technologies.
The SiC magnetometer team leads from JPL and GRC (left: Dr. Hannes Kraus, middle: Dr. Phillip Neudeck, right: Dr. Corey Cochrane) at the last International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM) where their research is presented annually. Acknowledgment: The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004) and the NASA Glenn Research Center.
Project Lead(s):
Dr. Corey Cochrane, Dr. Hannes Kraus, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology
Dr. Phil Neudeck, David Spry, NASA Glenn Research Center
Sponsoring Organization(s):
Science Mission Directorate PICASSO, JPL R&D fund
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Last Updated Aug 06, 2024 Related Terms
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