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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes
A pair of monster black holes swirl in a cloud of gas in this artist’s concept of AT 2021hdr, a recurring outburst studied by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California. NASA/Aurore Simonnet (Sonoma State University) Scientists using observations from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a galaxy.
“It’s a very weird event, called AT 2021hdr, that keeps recurring every few months,” said Lorena Hernández-García, an astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, the Millennium Nucleus on Transversal Research and Technology to Explore Supermassive Black Holes, and University of Valparaíso in Chile. “We think that a gas cloud engulfed the black holes. As they orbit each other, the black holes interact with the cloud, perturbing and consuming its gas. This produces an oscillating pattern in the light from the system.”
A paper about AT 2021hdr, led by Hernández-García, was published Nov. 13 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The dual black holes are in the center of a galaxy called 2MASX J21240027+3409114, located 1 billion light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. The pair are about 16 billion miles (26 billion kilometers) apart, close enough that light only takes a day to travel between them. Together they contain 40 million times the Sun’s mass.
Scientists estimate the black holes complete an orbit every 130 days and will collide and merge in approximately 70,000 years.
AT 2021hdr was first spotted in March 2021 by the Caltech-led ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility) at the Palomar Observatory in California. It was flagged as a potentially interesting source by ALeRCE (Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events). This multidisciplinary team combines artificial intelligence tools with human expertise to report events in the night sky to the astronomical community using the mountains of data collected by survey programs like ZTF.
“Although this flare was originally thought to be a supernova, outbursts in 2022 made us think of other explanations,” said co-author Alejandra Muñoz-Arancibia, an ALeRCE team member and astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile. “Each subsequent event has helped us refine our model of what’s going on in the system.”
Since the first flare, ZTF has detected outbursts from AT 2021hdr every 60 to 90 days.
Hernández-García and her team have been observing the source with Swift since November 2022. Swift helped them determine that the binary produces oscillations in ultraviolet and X-ray light on the same time scales as ZTF sees them in the visible range.
The researchers conducted a Goldilocks-type elimination of different models to explain what they saw in the data.
Initially, they thought the signal could be the byproduct of normal activity in the galactic center. Then they considered whether a tidal disruption event — the destruction of a star that wandered too close to one of the black holes — could be the cause.
Finally, they settled on another possibility, the tidal disruption of a gas cloud, one that was bigger than the binary itself. When the cloud encountered the black holes, gravity ripped it apart, forming filaments around the pair, and friction started to heat it. The gas got particularly dense and hot close to the black holes. As the binary orbits, the complex interplay of forces ejects some of the gas from the system on each rotation. These interactions produce the fluctuating light Swift and ZTF observe.
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Watch as a gas cloud encounters two supermassive black holes in this simulation. The complex interplay of gravitational and frictional forces causes the cloud to condense and heat. Some of the gas is ejected from the system with each orbit of the black holes. F. Goicovic et al. 2016 Hernández-García and her team plan to continue observations of AT 2021hdr to better understand the system and improve their models. They’re also interested in studying its home galaxy, which is currently merging with another one nearby — an event first reported in their paper.
“As Swift approaches its 20th anniversary, it’s incredible to see all the new science it’s still helping the community accomplish,” said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “There’s still so much it has left to teach us about our ever-changing cosmos.”
NASA’s missions are part of a growing, worldwide network watching for changes in the sky to solve mysteries of how the universe works.
Goddard manages the Swift mission in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Northrop Grumman Space Systems in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory in Italy, and the Italian Space Agency.
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By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 Editor Jeanette Kazmierczak Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
On Sept. 19, the imaging spectrometer on the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite detected this methane plume in Karachi, Pakistan, extending nearly 2½ miles (4 kilometers) from a landfill. The spectrometer was designed at NASA JPL.Carbon Mapper/Planet Labs PBC Extending about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from a coal-fired power plant, this carbon dioxide plume in Kendal, South Africa, was captured Sept. 19 by the imaging spectrometer on the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite.Carbon Mapper/Planet Labs PBC This methane plume was captured south of Midland, Texas, in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s largest oil fields. The imaging spectrometer on the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite made the detection on Sept. 24.Carbon Mapper/Planet Labs PBC The imaging spectrometer aboard the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite identified methane and carbon dioxide plumes in the United States and internationally.
Using data from an instrument designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the nonprofit Carbon Mapper has released the first methane and carbon dioxide detections from the Tanager-1 satellite. The detections highlight methane plumes in Pakistan and Texas, as well as a carbon dioxide plume in South Africa.
The data contributes to Carbon Mapper’s goal to identify and measure greenhouse gas point-source emissions on a global scale and make that information accessible and actionable.
Enabled by Carbon Mapper and built by Planet Labs PBC, Tanager-1 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Aug. 16 and has been collecting data to verify that its imaging spectrometer, which is based on technology developed at NASA JPL, is functioning properly. Both Planet Labs PBC and JPL are members of the philanthropically funded Carbon Mapper Coalition.
“The first greenhouse gas images from Tanager-1 are exciting and are a compelling sign of things to come,” said James Graf, director for Earth Science and Technology at JPL. “The satellite plays a crucial role in detecting and measuring methane and carbon dioxide emissions. The mission is a giant step forward in addressing greenhouse gas emissions.”
The data used to produce the Pakistan image was collected over the city of Karachi on Sept. 19 and shows a roughly 2.5-mile-long (4-kilometer-long) methane plume emanating from a landfill. Carbon Mapper’s preliminary estimate of the source emissions rate is more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of methane released per hour.
The image collected that same day over Kendal, South Africa, displays a nearly 2-mile-long (3-kilometer-long) carbon dioxide plume coming from a coal-fired power plant. Carbon Mapper’s preliminary estimate of the source emissions rate is roughly 1.3 million pounds (600,000 kilograms) of carbon dioxide per hour.
The Texas image, collected on Sept. 24, reveals a methane plume to the south of the city of Midland, in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oilfields in the world. Carbon Mapper’s preliminary estimate of the source emissions rate is nearly 900 pounds (400 kilograms) of methane per hour.
In the 1980s, JPL helped pioneer the development of imaging spectrometers with AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer), and in 2022, NASA installed the imaging spectrometer EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), developed at JPL, aboard the International Space Station.
A descendant of those instruments, the imaging spectrometer aboard Tanager-1 can measure hundreds of wavelengths of light reflected from Earth’s surface. Each chemical compound on the ground and in the atmosphere reflects and absorbs different combinations of wavelengths, which give it a “spectral fingerprint” that researchers can identify. Using this approach, Tanager-1 will help researchers detect and measure emissions down to the facility level.
Once in full operation, the spacecraft will scan about 116,000 square miles (300,000 square kilometers) of Earth’s surface per day. Methane and carbon dioxide measurements collected by Tanager-1 will be publicly available on the Carbon Mapper data portal.
More About Carbon Mapper
Carbon Mapper is a nonprofit organization focused on facilitating timely action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Its mission is to fill gaps in the emerging global ecosystem of methane and carbon dioxide monitoring systems by delivering data at facility scale that is precise, timely, and accessible to empower science-based decision making and action. The organization is leading the development of the Carbon Mapper constellation of satellites supported by a public-private partnership composed of Planet Labs PBC, JPL, the California Air Resources Board, Arizona State University, and RMI, with funding from High Tide Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and other philanthropic donors.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 10, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
7 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals Unusual Jets of Volatile Gas from Icy Centaur 29P
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the gases spewing from one of these objects, suggesting a varied composition and providing new insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system.
Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last few million years, and may eventually become short-period comets. They are “hybrid” in the sense that they are in a transitional stage of their orbital evolution: Many share characteristics with both trans-Neptunian objects (from the cold Kuiper Belt reservoir), and short-period comets, which are objects highly altered by repeated close passages around the Sun.
Image A: Illustration
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Since these small icy bodies are in an orbital transitional phase, they have been the subject of various studies as scientists seek to understand their composition, the reasons behind their outgassing activity — the loss of their ices that lie underneath the surface — and how they serve as a link between primordial icy bodies in the outer solar system and evolved comets.
A team of scientists recently used Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument to obtain data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 (29P for short), an object that is known for its highly active and quasi-periodic outbursts. It varies in intensity every six to eight weeks, making it one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. They discovered a new jet of carbon monoxide (CO) and previously unseen jets of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas, which give new clues to the nature of the centaur’s nucleus.
“Centaurs can be considered as some of the leftovers of our planetary system’s formation. Because they are stored at very cold temperatures, they preserve information about volatiles in the early stages of the solar system,” said Sara Faggi of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and American University in Washington, DC, lead author of the study. “Webb really opened the door to a resolution and sensitivity that was impressive to us — when we saw the data for the first time, we were excited. We had never seen anything like this.”
Webb and the Jets
Centaurs’ distant orbits and consequent faintness have inhibited detailed observations in the past. Data from prior radio wavelength observations of Centaur 29P showed a jet pointed generally toward the Sun (and Earth) composed of CO. Webb detected this face-on jet and, thanks to its large mirror and infrared capabilities, also sensitively searched for many other chemicals, including water (H2O) and CO2. The latter is one of the main forms in which carbon is stored across the solar system. No indication of water vapor was detected in the atmosphere of 29P, which could be related to the extremely cold temperatures present in this body.
The telescope’s unique imaging and spectral data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of CO2 emanating in the north and south directions, and another jet of CO pointing toward the north. This was the first definitive detection of CO2 in Centaur 29P.
Image B: IFU Graphic
A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s spectrographic capabilities to gather data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. The Webb data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of carbon dioxide spewing in the north and south directions, and a jet of carbon monoxide pointing toward north. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI), S. Faggi (NASA-GSFC, American University) Based on the data gathered by Webb, the team created a 3D model of the jets to understand their orientation and origin. They found through their modeling efforts that the jets were emitted from different regions on the centaur’s nucleus, even though the nucleus itself cannot be resolved by Webb. The jets’ angles suggest the possibility that the nucleus may be an aggregate of distinct objects with different compositions; however, other scenarios can’t yet be excluded.
Video A: Zoom and Spin
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) “The fact that Centaur 29P has such dramatic differences in the abundance of CO and CO2 across its surface suggests that 29P may be made of several pieces,” said Geronimo Villanueva, co-author of the study at NASA Goddard. “Maybe two pieces coalesced together and made this centaur, which is a mixture between very different bodies that underwent separate formation pathways. It challenges our ideas about how primordial objects are created and stored in the Kuiper Belt.”
Persisting Unanswered Questions (For Now)
The reasons for Centaur 29P’s bursts in brightness, and the mechanisms behind its outgassing activity through the CO and CO2 jets, continue to be two major areas of interest that require further investigation.
In the case of comets, scientists know that their jets are often driven by the outgassing of water. However, because of the centaurs’ location, they are too cold for water ice to sublimate, meaning that the nature of their outgassing activity differs from comets.
“We only had time to look at this object once, like a snapshot in time,” said Adam McKay, a co-author of the study at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “I’d like to go back and look at Centaur 29P over a much longer period of time. Do the jets always have that orientation? Is there perhaps another carbon monoxide jet that turns on at a different point in the rotation period? Looking at these jets over time would give us much better insights into what is driving these outbursts.”
The team is hopeful that as they increase their understanding of Centaur 29P, they can apply the same techniques to other centaurs. By improving the astronomical community’s collective knowledge of centaurs, we can simultaneously better our understanding on the formation and evolution of our solar system.
These findings have been published in Nature.
The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 2416.
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).
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Abigail Major – amajor@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 02, 2024 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
The Global Methane Budget 2024 paints a troubling picture of the current state of global methane emissions. The new report, which uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, reveals that human activities are now responsible for at least two-thirds of global methane emissions.
This marks a significant increase in human-produced methane sources over the past two decades, with emissions rising by 20%, with the fastest rise occurring over the last five years.
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By European Space Agency
According to recent research, Europe’s net greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by around 25% since the 1990s. While this is good news, the study also revealed a weakening in the capacity of land and vegetation to absorb and store atmospheric carbon.
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