Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Fast-Flying Black Hole Yields Clues to Supernova Origin
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A digital rendering of the baseline configuration for Blue Origin’s free-flying commercial space station, Orbital Reef, which continues to be developed as part of a Space Act Agreement with NASA.Blue Origin A NASA-supported commercial space station, Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef, recently completed a human-in-the-loop testing milestone as the agency works toward developing commercial space stations in low Earth orbit.
The human-in-the-loop test scenarios utilized individual participants or small groups to perform day-in-the-life walkthroughs in life-sized mockups of major station components. Participants provided feedback while simulating microgravity operations, including cargo transfer, trash transfer, stowage, and worksite assessments.
“Human-in-the-loop and iterative testing are essential to inform key decisions and mitigate risks to crew health and safety,” said Angela Hart, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “NASA’s insight into our partner’s testing milestones enables the agency to gain insight into partner progress and share expertise, ultimately improving industry and NASA’s mission success.”
Test subjects in the mockup for Blue Origin’s free-flying commercial space station, Orbital Reef, during the human-in-the-loop test.Blue Origin The milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement originally awarded to Blue Origin in 2021 and focused on the design progress for multiple worksites, floors, and translation paths within the station. This ensures a commercial station can support human life, which is critical to advancing scientific research in a microgravity environment and maintaining a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.
The test evaluated various aspects of Orbital Reef’s environment to provide information needed for the space station’s design. Assessment areas included the private crew quarters, dining area, lavatory, research laboratory, and berthing and docking hatches.
To facilitate the test, Blue Origin built stand-alone mockups of each floor in the internally developed habitable module. These mockups will be iteratively updated as the fidelity of components and subsystems matures, enabling future human-in-the-loop testing.
The research team’s observations will be used to provide design recommendations for worksite volumes, layouts, restraint and mobility aid layouts, usability and workload, and positioning of interfaces and equipment.
NASA supports the design and development of multiple commercial space stations, including Orbital Reef, through funded and unfunded agreements. The current design and development phase will soon be followed by the procurement of services from one or more companies, where NASA aims to be one of many customers for low Earth orbit stations.
NASA is committed to maintaining a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit as the agency transitions from the International Space Station to commercial space stations. For nearly 25 years, NASA has supported a continuous presence in low Earth orbit aboard the space station and will continue to build on the agency’s extensive human spaceflight experience to advance future scientific and exploration goals.
For more information about commercial space stations, visit:
www.nasa.gov/commercialspacestations
A test subject in the mockup for Blue Origin’s free-flying commercial space station, Orbital Reef, during the human-in-the-loop test.Blue Origin Keep Exploring Discover More Topics
Low Earth Orbit Economy
Commercial Space
Commercial Crew Program
Humans In Space
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Tracks a Roaming Magnetar of Unknown Origin
This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. Credits:
ESA Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the magnetar called SGR 0501+4516 is traversing our galaxy from an unknown place of origin. Researchers say that this runaway magnetar is the likeliest candidate in our Milky Way galaxy for a magnetar that was not born in a supernova explosion as initially predicted. It is so strange it might even offer clues to the mechanism behind events known as fast radio bursts.
“Magnetars are neutron stars — the dead remnants of stars — composed entirely of neutrons. What makes magnetars unique is their extreme magnetic fields,” said Ashley Chrimes, lead author of the discovery paper published in the April 15 journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Chrimes is a European Space Agency Research Fellow at the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands.
Magnetars have comic-book-hero superpowers. A magnetar has a magnetic field about a trillion times more powerful than Earth’s magnetosphere. If a magnetar flew by Earth at half the Moon’s distance, its intense field would wipe out every credit card on our planet. If a human got within 600 miles, the magnetar would become a proverbial sci-fi death-ray, ripping apart every atom inside the body.
The magnetar’s strangeness was identified with the help of Hubble’s sensitive instruments as well as precise benchmarks from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia spacecraft.
Initially, the mysterious magnetar was discovered in 2008 when NASA’s Swift Observatory spotted brief, intense flashes of gamma rays from the outskirts of the Milky Way. The source, which turned out to be one of only about 30 known magnetars in the Milky Way, was dubbed SGR 0501+4516.
This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, which is a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. Neutron stars are some of the most compact and extreme objects in the universe. These stars typically pack more than the mass of the Sun into a sphere of neutrons about 12 miles across. The neutron star is depicted as a white-blueish sphere. The magnetic field is shown as filaments streaming out from its polar regions. Illustration: ESA Because magnetars are neutron stars, the natural explanation for their formation is that they are born in supernovae, when a star explodes and can collapse down to an ultra-dense neutron star. This appeared to be the case for SGR 0501+4516, which is located close to a supernova remnant called HB9. The separation between the magnetar and the center of the supernova remnant on the sky is just 80 arcminutes, or slightly wider than your pinky finger when viewed at the end of your outstretched arm.
But a decade-long study with Hubble cast doubt on the magnetar’s birthplace. After initial observations with ground-based telescopes shortly after SGR 0501+4516’s discovery, researchers used Hubble’s exquisite sensitivity and steady pointing to spot the magnetar’s faint infrared glow in 2010, 2012, and 2020. Each of these images was aligned to a reference frame defined by observations from the Gaia spacecraft, which has crafted an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of nearly two billion stars in the Milky Way. This method revealed the subtle motion of the magnetar as it traversed the sky.
“All of this movement we measure is smaller than a single pixel of a Hubble image,” said co-investigator Joe Lyman of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. “Being able to robustly perform such measurements really is a testament to the long-term stability of Hubble.”
By tracking the magnetar’s position, the team was able to measure the object’s apparent motion across the sky. Both the speed and direction of SGR 0501+4516’s movement showed that the magnetar could not be associated with the nearby supernova remnant. Tracing the magnetar’s trajectory thousands of years into the past showed that there were no other supernova remnants or massive star clusters with which it could be associated.
If SGR 0501+4516 was not born in a supernova, the magnetar must either be older than its estimated 20,000-year age, or it may have formed in another way. Magnetars may also be able to form through the merger of two lower-mass neutron stars or through a process called accretion-induced collapse. Accretion-induced collapse requires a binary star system containing a white dwarf: the core of a dead Sun-like star. If the white dwarf pulls in gas from its companion, it can grow too massive to support itself, leading to an explosion — or possibly the creation of a magnetar.
“Normally, this scenario leads to the ignition of nuclear reactions, and the white dwarf exploding, leaving nothing behind. But it has been theorized that under certain conditions, the white dwarf can instead collapse into a neutron star. We think this might be how SGR 0501 was born,” added Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Understanding Fast Radio Bursts
SGR 0501+4516 is currently the best candidate for a magnetar in our galaxy that may have formed through a merger or accretion-induced collapse. Magnetars that form through accretion-induced collapse could provide an explanation for some of the mysterious fast radio bursts, which are brief but powerful flashes of radio waves. In particular, this scenario may explain the origin of fast radio bursts that emerge from stellar populations too ancient to have recently birthed stars massive enough to explode as supernovae.
“Magnetar birth rates and formation scenarios are among the most pressing questions in high-energy astrophysics, with implications for many of the universe’s most powerful transient events, such as gamma-ray bursts, super-luminous supernovae, and fast radio bursts,” said Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.
The research team has further Hubble observations planned to study the origins of other magnetars in the Milky Way, helping to understand how these extreme magnetic objects form.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Related Images & Videos
Illustration of Magnetar
This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, which is a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field.
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 15, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Bethany Downer
ESA/Hubble
bethany.downer@esahubble.org
Garching, Germany
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Science Ashley Chrimes
ESA-ESTEC/Radboud University
Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Magnetars Neutron Stars Stars The Universe
Related Links and Documents
ESA/Hubble’s Release The science paper by A.A. Chrimes et al.
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Images
Hubble News
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton is playing a crucial role in investigating the longest and most energetic bursts of X-rays seen from a newly awakened black hole. Watching this strange behaviour unfold in real time offers a unique opportunity to learn more about these powerful events and the mysterious behaviour of massive black holes.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 6 Min Read NASA Webb’s Autopsy of Planet Swallowed by Star Yields Surprise
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of what is thought to be the first-ever recorded planetary engulfment event revealed a hot accretion disk surrounding the star, with an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene. Webb also revealed that the star did not swell to swallow the planet, but the planet’s orbit actually slowly depreciated over time, as seen in this artist’s concept. Full illustration below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI) Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have provided a surprising twist in the narrative surrounding what is believed to be the first star observed in the act of swallowing a planet. The new findings suggest that the star actually did not swell to envelop a planet as previously hypothesized. Instead, Webb’s observations show the planet’s orbit shrank over time, slowly bringing the planet closer to its demise until it was engulfed in full.
“Because this is such a novel event, we didn’t quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction,” said Ryan Lau, lead author of the new paper and astronomer at NSF NOIRLab (National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) in Tuscon, Arizona. “With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.”
Two instruments aboard Webb conducted the post-mortem of the scene – Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). The researchers were able to come to their conclusion using a two-pronged investigative approach.
Image A: Planetary Engulfment Illustration
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of what is thought to be the first-ever recorded planetary engulfment event revealed a hot accretion disk surrounding the star, with an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene. Webb also revealed that the star did not swell to swallow the planet, but the planet’s orbit actually slowly depreciated over time, as seen in this artist’s concept. NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI) Constraining the How
The star at the center of this scene is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years away from Earth.
The brightening event, formally called ZTF SLRN-2020, was originally spotted as a flash of optical light using the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California. Data from NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) showed the star actually brightened in the infrared a year before the optical light flash, hinting at the presence of dust. This initial 2023 investigation led researchers to believe that the star was more Sun-like, and had been in the process of aging into a red giant over hundreds of thousands of years, slowly expanding as it exhausted its hydrogen fuel.
However, Webb’s MIRI told a different story. With powerful sensitivity and spatial resolution, Webb was able to precisely measure the hidden emission from the star and its immediate surroundings, which lie in a very crowded region of space. The researchers found the star was not as bright as it should have been if it had evolved into a red giant, indicating there was no swelling to engulf the planet as once thought.
Reconstructing the Scene
Researchers suggest that, at one point, the planet was about Jupiter-sized, but orbited quite close to the star, even closer than Mercury’s orbit around our Sun. Over millions of years, the planet orbited closer and closer to the star, leading to the catastrophic consequence.
“The planet eventually started to graze the star’s atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment,” said team member Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The planet, as it’s falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.”
In its final splashdown, the planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star. As it expanded and cooled off, the heavy elements in this gas condensed into cold dust over the next year.
Inspecting the Leftovers
While the researchers did expect an expanding cloud of cooler dust around the star, a look with the powerful NIRSpec revealed a hot circumstellar disk of molecular gas closer in. Furthermore, Webb’s high spectral resolution was able to detect certain molecules in this accretion disk, including carbon monoxide.
“With such a transformative telescope like Webb, it was hard for me to have any expectations of what we’d find in the immediate surroundings of the star,” said Colette Salyk of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, an exoplanet researcher and co-author on the new paper. “I will say, I could not have expected seeing what has the characteristics of a planet-forming region, even though planets are not forming here, in the aftermath of an engulfment.”
The ability to characterize this gas opens more questions for researchers about what actually happened once the planet was fully swallowed by the star.
“This is truly the precipice of studying these events. This is the only one we’ve observed in action, and this is the best detection of the aftermath after things have settled back down,” Lau said. “We hope this is just the start of our sample.”
These observations, taken under Guaranteed Time Observation program 1240, which was specifically designed to investigate a family of mysterious, sudden, infrared brightening events, were among the first Target of Opportunity programs performed by Webb. These types of study are reserved for events, like supernova explosions, that are expected to occur, but researchers don’t exactly know when or where. NASA’s space telescopes are part of a growing, international network that stands ready to witness these fleeting changes, to help us understand how the universe works.
Researchers expect to add to their sample and identify future events like this using the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will survey large areas of the sky repeatedly to look for changes over time.
The team’s findings appear today in The Astrophysical Journal.
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
Click any image to open a larger version.
View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
View/Download the science paper from the The Astrophysical Journal.
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
Read more about Webb’s impact on exoplanet research
Video: How to Study Exoplanets
Learn more about exoplanets
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Science Themes
Webb Mission Page
Related For Kids
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
Ciencia de la NASA
NASA en español
Space Place para niños
Keep Exploring Related Topics
James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Exoplanets
Stars
Universe
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 10, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Astrophysics Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Science & Research Stars The Milky Way The Universe View the full article
-
By NASA
In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful – as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula. Astronomers study these objects by looking at all kinds of light.X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand This image of the Helix Nebula, released on March 4, 2025, shows a potentially destructive white dwarf at the nebula’s center: this star may have destroyed a planet. This has never been seen before – and could explain a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers have detected from the nebula for over 40 years.
This view combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (magenta), optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (orange, light blue), infrared data from the European Southern Observatory VISTA telescope (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula. Data from Chandra indicates that this white dwarf has destroyed a very closely orbiting planet.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.