Category Archives: Astronomy

Our Milky Way galaxy is a collection of stars famously arranged in a series of spiral arms wrapped around a black hole center. But galaxies aren't the only spiral structures in the universe; individual stars can have swirling, spiral arms as well. And new research is helping to unravel how and why they form.

A new study published July 6 in the journal Nature Astronomy describes how a giant planet might be generating spiral arms in the dusty disk encircling its star. "Our study puts forward a solid piece of evidence that these spiral arms are caused by giant planets," lead study author Kevin Wagner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, said in a statement.

The exoplanet, called MWC 758c, lies in a very young star system about 500 million light-years from Earth. Its parent star still sits in the center of a protoplanetary disk an amalgamation of dust and rocky objects that have not yet condensed into planets, moons and asteroids.

MWC 758c is a gas giant with about twice the mass of Jupiter. The researchers think this giant planet's gravitational heft allowed it to sculpt the protoplanetary disk in which it sits by stretching the surrounding gas into long arms as the planet orbited its host star. Jupiter may have once played a similar role in shaping our solar system, the team added.

This particular protoplanetary disk was discovered in 2013, but scientists hadn't been able to confirm that MWC 758c existed until now. It turns out, the gas giant was difficult to see because it is extremely red. Longer, redder wavelengths of light are notoriously difficult to pick up with ground-based telescopes. But the team used the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer in Arizona, one of the most red-sensitive telescopes ever built.

MWC 758c's redness might help to explain why gas giants haven't yet been spotted orbiting other spiral protoplanetary disks. The researchers hope to confirm their observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) next year.

"Depending on the results that come from the JWST observations, we can begin to apply this newfound knowledge to other stellar systems, and that will allow us to make predictions about where other hidden planets might be lurking," Wagner said.

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Star system with galaxy-like 'arms' may be holding a secret planet - Livescience.com

Who is the greatest astronomer of all time?

The history of astronomy is the story of how humanity has uncovered the secrets of the cosmos, from early astronomers defining the mechanics of the Solar System and how the night sky changes over time, to astrophysicists studying the chemistry of stars, the expansion of the Universe and the warping of spacetime.

Of course, no single astronomer can strictly be deemed 'the greatest'.

Astronomy - like all science - is an accumulative and collaborative effort, each new generation building upon the successes - and mistakes - of the past.

Here we've listed some of the most famous names in the history of astronomy: those men and women who revolutionised our view of the night sky, and helped us understand a little better our own place in the vast cosmos.

Hipparchus was a Greek mathematician and astronomer. None of his works has survived, but we know of them through Ptolemy, last of the ancient Greek astronomers, who made a star catalogue in 140 AD.

After seeing a nova in 134 BC, Hipparchus catalogued the positions of 850 stars in case another popped into view. By comparing his values with some made 150 years earlier, he discovered the precession of the equinoxes. He also founded the stellar magnitude system we use today.

Ptolemy of Alexandria, arguably the greatest astronomer of antiquity, wrote a sweeping synthesis of the astronomical philosophy of the ancient Greeks.

His great book, the Almagest, is a work of awesome complexity in which he represents planetary motion through interlocking circular orbits, with Earth at the centre of the Solar System. This work was the standard textbook on planetary motion until the 16th century, when Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model.

A gifted and greatly respected teacher, Egyptian polymath Hypatia (c350415) was in her time the worlds leading astronomer and mathematician. The widely-educated daughter of the mathematician and Euripides scholar Theon of Alexandria, one contemporary said she far surpass[ed] all the philosophers of her own time.

Although none of her writings survives, she is thought to have edited Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest, a manual on the motions of the stars and planets, and to have constructed astrolabes.

Copernicus wrote one of the most influential books of all time, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (best known as De Revolutionibus). Daringly, Copernicus the revolutionary showed that planetary motions could be accounted for in a world system with the Sun at the centre.

His change of perspective from the Earth at the centre to the Sun in prime position deeply challenged Christian beliefs. Acceptance of his model didnt come until nearly a century later.

This Danish nobleman unfortunately had his nose hacked off in a duel. A respected astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, his careful observation of the nova of 1572 sparked his interest in astronomy.

By noting that the new star did not change position from night to night (it was far away) he shattered the crystalline Universe of the ancient philosophers who had maintained that the Universe beyond the Moon was perfect and unchangeable.

Possibly the worlds best-known astronomer, Galileo constructed a simple refracting telescope in 1610 and became the first person to use a spy-glass for astronomy. The sheer number of stars, the rough surface of the Moon and sunspots astonished him.

He quickly discovered the Galilean moons of Jupiter and observed the phases of Venus. Everything he saw agreed with the Copernican system which he openly proclaimed, despite strong opposition from the Church.

Johannes Kepler broke free of the classical tradition in astronomy, preferring the methods of science to the thoughts of the ancient sages. In 1600, Tycho Brahe (who had compiled precise observations of Mars) asked Kepler to examine its orbit.

Eight years later, he found not only that it was elliptical, but that all the other planets have elliptical orbits too. Kepler also observed a star in 1604 that suddenly brightened. Now called Keplers star, it was the last supernova seen in the Milky Way.

Hevelius was a wealthy brewer and councillor who made many observations in his spare time. He constructed a large rooftop observatory that employed an enormous telescope of 130ft (40m) focal length to observe the Moon, from which he drew exquisite maps.

His work in positional astronomy led to a star catalogue of 1,564 stars being published the most complete of its day. Hevelius used a quadrant for this and was the last astronomer to do major observational work without the aid of a telescope.

Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini equipped and directed the Paris Observatory from its foundation in 1671 until his death. His observations were focused around the Solar System, where he measured the distance of the Earth from the Sun to an accuracy of 7%.

It was a truly remarkable breakthrough for the time. He also discovered four of Saturns moons: lapetus, Rhea, Dione and Tethys, as well as the gap in Saturns rings that now bears his name.

Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, is mainly remembered for his work on gravity. He also made major contributions to astronomy through his work on optics, experimenting with the surfaces of lenses to see if he could eliminate chromatic aberration.

From this research he correctly concluded that either compound lenses or curved mirrors would be needed to reduce colour distortion. Although he made small telescopes to this (Newtonian) design, only later generations of observers benefited.

John Flamsteed was hand-picked by Charles II as the first Astronomer Royal. Amongst other duties, his job was to improve astronomical methods for finding longitude at sea. The Kings navy was engaged in a global search for colonies, and desperately needed to improve navigation.

Flamsteed, using star positions for this purpose, designed accurate instruments that he used to make a new star catalogue and a star atlas featuring the positions of 3,000 stars.

Edmond Halley made enormous contributions to almost every branch of physics and astronomy. Using his knowledge of geometry and historical astronomy, Halley linked the comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 to the same object, which he correctly predicted would return in 1758.

Halley would be long dead by then, which is why not everyone took his prediction seriously, but the comet was named after him nonetheless. He died in 1742 but the comet is his lasting legacy.

Lepaute, with fellow French astronomers and Alexis Clairaut and Joseph Lalande, calculated the return date of Halleys Comet, including complex adjustments for the gravitational influence of Saturn and Jupiter.

For many years she compiled ephemerides (tables predicting the future movements) of celestial bodies for the annual publication of the distinguished French Academy of Sciences, as well as writing on the transit of Venus across the Sun and producing a chart predicting the path of the 1764 annular eclipse.

The dazzling, six-tailed comet of 1744 sparked Charles Messiers interest in astronomy. He was the finest comet hunter of his time, finding a total of 13. In his sweeps of the sky Messier also netted fuzzy objects that looked like comets but were fixed in position.

To aid fellow comet hunters, he listed 103 of these nebulous objects, which included star clusters, gaseous nebulae and galaxies. This compilation is the Messier Catalogue a cornerstone of modern astronomy.

Sir William Herschel has quite a few contributions to his name: discoverer of the planet Uranus, pioneer of sidereal astronomy and designer of what was the worlds biggest reflector from 1789 to 1845.

William and his sister Caroline catalogued thousands of deep-sky objects. William categorised them, along the way developing a theory of stellar evolution and estimate for the size and shape of the Milky Way.

Caroline Herschel achieved many firsts, among them being the first woman to discover a comet (she discovered 8 in her lifetime), the first paid female astronomer and, along with Mary Somerville, the first woman to become a member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

She is also known for her work revising a catalogue of nearly 3,000 stars that had been observed by John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal. She discovered open star cluster NGC 7789, also known as Caroline's Rose Cluster, and on 16 March 2016 received her own Google Doodle.

Mary Somerville was a celebrated scientist of her day who despite the protestations of many of her male peers, published scientific papers on magnetism and the solar spectrum.

She, along with Caroline Herschel, became the first woman to become a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. When she died, she left behind some of the most popular science textbooks of the 19th century.

This German physicist earned his living by making the worlds finest glass for telescopes. In 1813, while researching the refractive properties of glass, he accidentally observed dark lines in the solar spectrum. He investigated them intensively, laying the foundations of spectroscopy.

In the yellow he observed a pair of very dark lines, to which he assigned the letter D. These later became known as the sodium D lines, because the light is absorbed by sodium in the Suns atmosphere.

John was the son of William Herschel. He studied mathematics at Cambridge, and began to assist his father in 1816. In 1834 he went to the observatory at the Cape of Good Hope to survey the southern skies and, while there, discovered no fewer than 2,000 nebulae and 2,000 double stars.

John found himself in the midst of controversy in 1835, when the New York Sun newspaper spun a hoax to boost its sales claiming that he had found animals living on the Moon.

Airy trained as a mathematician in Cambridge and directed the universitys observatory from 1828 at the age of 27. As the seventh Astronomer Royal (1835-1881) he reformed the Royal Observatory Greenwich which, by all accounts, he ruled with a rod of iron.

Airy established a new meridian line at Greenwich in 1851, replacing three earlier meridians. At an international conference held in Washington DC in 1884 this became the definitive prime meridian of the globe.

Huggins founded astronomical spectroscopy, being the first to make intensive investigations of stellar spectra, and was the disciplines pioneer. In 1863 he was the first to show that stars are composed of chemical elements that occur in the solar spectrum.

That same year he scored another first by measuring the redshift of Sirius, following which he measured the velocities of many stars. Hugginss spectroscope also proved that emission nebulae are glowing clouds of gas.

Lowell used his personal fortune to make the first scientific search for life on Mars. Starting in 1894 he spent 15 years observing Mars with an excellent 24-inch refractor at his own observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

He produced detailed maps of the Red Planet that recorded seasonal variations as well as linear features but, like other planetary scientists of his generation, he interpreted many surface features of Mars as evidence that an advanced civilisation lived there.

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Fleming devised the Pickering-Fleming system for classifying stars based on the amount of hydrogen observed in their spectra. Abandoned in the USA by her husband while pregnant, she supported herself by working as a maid for Edward Pickering, Director of the Harvard College Observatory, quickly advancing to become a computer at the observatory.

She discovered over 200 variable stars and 59 nebulae, including the famous Horsehead Nebula in 1888. She became an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1906.

Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer who made her name while working as an assistant at Harvard University in the late 19th century. She, along with many other women astronomers, worked on classifying the spectra of stars.

Cannon is responsible for having simplified Williamina Flemings spectra classification to classes O, B, A, F, G, K and M, which is now the standard.

A pioneer of solar studies, Maunder was one of the first female scientists employed at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, albeit as a low-paid computer. During the 1890s she recorded and photographed sunspots and researched eclipses during expeditions to Algiers, Canada, Lapland and Norway.

She captured the first ever picture of streamers from the Suns corona using a solarscope of her own design and, alongside her husband Walter Maunder, compiled the famous Maunder Butterfly Diagram that tracked sunspot movements over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.

This American solar astronomer was the greatest telescope builder of the 20th century. In 1892 he established the Yerkes Observatory for the University of Chicago, together with its 40-inch refractor which still holds the title of the worlds largest.

He founded the Mount Wilson Observatory, California, which he equipped with the 60-inch and 100-inch reflectors. Hale was also the mastermind behind the 200-inch Palomar telescope which bears his name.

Leavitt found the key to unlock the scale of the Universe. In 1895 she joined Harvard College Observatory, where she measured the brightness (magnitude) of stars by studying its collection of photographic plates. Through this she discovered about 2,400 variable stars.

She noticed that the period of variability of a so-called Cepheid variable indicates its absolute magnitude, from which its distance can be estimated. This provided the first calculation of distances to galaxies.

Hertzsprung discovered the two main groupings of stars the luminous giants and supergiants, and the dwarfs now known as main sequence stars. Henry Norris Russell made the same discovery independently.

Both created diagrams to show the groupings of these stars, which are known today as Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams. Hertzsprung also measured the distances to several variable stars, which he then used as a measuring stick to find the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

In 1916 Eddington received a paper of Einsteins general theory of relativity which explains the force of gravity using geometry. To put Einstein to the test, he observed the total eclipse of 1919 off the west coast of Africa.

His photographs displayed a tiny shift of stars observed close to the Sun, caused by the Suns gravity bending starlight. This observation was the first experimental confirmation of Einsteins work, and it immediately made Eddington world famous.

Edwin Hubble, who trained as a lawyer, was the American observational astronomer who discovered the expansion of the Universe. In 192324 he used the Mount Wilson 100-inch telescope to measure the distances to 18 galaxies an enormous achievement.

When he compared these distances to redshifts measured by others, he found that a galaxys distance is proportional to its velocity. He thus confirmed the idea of an expanding Universe, which is fundamental to cosmology.

Baade made a great discovery in 1944 thanks to wartime blackout conditions in Los Angeles. He had unrestricted access to the worlds largest telescope because many staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory were dragged away on war duties.

He resolved individual stars in M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) where he discovered that there are two distinct stellar populations of old and young stars. His finding revolutionised research on the evolution of galaxies.

Zwicky was an astronomer who made the startling discovery that most of our Universe is invisible filled with a substance now known as dark matter. In 1933 he examined galaxies in the Coma Cluster and discovered that they were moving too fast to remain bound within it.

Zwicky proposed the idea that mysterious, unseen matter between 10 and 100 times more abundant than visible matter, provided the additional gravitational pull needed to keep the cluster together.

Moore Sitterly was an American solar expert and cataloguer best known for her comprehensive spectroscopic indexes of atomic spectra. Her multiplet tables became the standard reference used by astrophysicists to identify the chemical compenents of stars and are still cited today.

From 1946, she was able to make ultraviolet spectral measurements of the Sun using data from V-2 rockets and later Skylab.

Inspired by Arthur Eddingtons famous trip to observe the 1919 solar eclipse, Payne-Gaposchkin became fascinated by astronomy early on and left her native Great Britain to study at Harvard Observatory.

Carrying on the work on stellar classification of earlier Harvard astronomers like Annie Jump Cannon and Edward Pickering, Payne-Gaposchkin is most remembered for having discovered that stars are primarily composed of helium and hydrogen.

Kuiper, the most distinguished planetary scientist of his time, discovered Uranuss moon Miranda in 1948 and Neptunes Nereid in 1949. A pioneer in planetary atmospheric research, he discovered the existence of a methane-laced atmosphere above Saturns moon Titan and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars in 1944.

Kuiper is usually best remembered for his prediction of enormous swarms of comet cores and small icy bodies beyond Neptune: the Kuiper Belt.

AmericanCanadian Hogg published the first comprehensive catalogue of variable stars in globular clusters. Working mainly at the Dunlap Observatory in Toronto, she photographed upwards of 2,000 global clusters and discovered hundreds of new variable stars.

The program director of astronomy with the US National Science Foundation and president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, she published over 200 papers, as well as popularising astronomy through lectures, books and a weekly newspaper column.

Clyde Tombaugh, a self-taught amateur astronomer, joined the Lowell Observatory in 1929 to work on the systematic search for a planet beyond Neptune. On 18 February 1930 he discovered Pluto when it appeared on a pair of photographic plates he had taken in January with the observatorys 13-inch refractor.

Tombaugh doggedly pursued a time-consuming search of the ecliptic for objects beyond Neptune, discovering 14 asteroids in the process.

In 1949 Bernard Lovell set up the UKs first radio telescope in a muddy field at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire. From this humble start he went on to make Manchester a world-class centre for radio astronomy.

At Jodrell Bank he constructed what was once the worlds largest steerable radio telescope, the 75m instrument that bears his name. Completed in 1957, it was the only telescope capable of tracking the first Soviet and American satellites Sputnik and Explorer 1. Its still in use today.

Ryle developed revolutionary radio telescopes and receivers. While at Cambridge University in 1950 he completed the first reliable map of the sky in radio waves, discovering some 50 cosmic radio sources.

His Third Cambridge Catalogue in 1959 led directly to the discovery of quasars when optical observers identified star-like objects at Ryles radio positions. By the 1960s his radio surveys had superseded the steady-state theory advanced by fellow theorist Fred Hoyle.

As the face of The Sky at Night, Patrick Moore introduced millions of viewers to astronomy, setting a record by becoming the worlds longest-serving presenter on the same programme.

Patrick was an active member of the British Astronomical Society and one time director of sections devoted to observing Venus, Mercury and the Moon. In fact, Patrick used sketches of the Moon mad by himself and another astronomer, Percy Wilkins, to produce a large map of the Moons surface. The Russian space agency even requested a copy to help plan the uncrewed Lunik missions.

In 1965 Patrick took a part-time position as the director of the Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland. In 1995, he compiled a list deep-sky objects to complement the Messier Catalogue, known as the Caldwell Catalogue, became extremely popular.

Nancy Grace Roman laid the groundwork for our understanding of how galaxies grow and founded NASAs space astronomy programme, which has led to her being known as the mother of Hubble.

At the University of Chicagos Yerkes Observatory she studied the motions of stars that formed in the same cluster as the Plough, but which had drifted apart. She later expanded her research to cover Sun-like stars visible to the naked eye and noticed that where stars orbited in the Milky Way was connected to their metallicity.

At the Naval Research Laboratory she mapped out the Milky Way in new wavelengths, became head of microwave spectroscopy. In 1959 she moved to NASA as head of observational astronomy, becoming the first woman to hold an executive office at NASA an granting her overall responsibility for the agencys space-based observatories.

Eugene Gene Shoemaker is regarded as the founder of 'astrogeology'.

He joined the US Geological Survey and contributed heavily to studies of data collected by the Ranger spacecraft, which impacted the Moon.

For years Shoemaker combined teaching at Caltech with astrogeological studies and took part in observational work searching for comets and near-Earth asteroids, which he undertook with his wife, Carolyn.

The pair's best-known discovery in 1993 was that of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which Carolyn initially described as a squashed comet and which hit Jupiter in 1994.

American astronomer Rubins meticulous observations of the unusual rotation rates in galaxies provided the first direct evidence of dark matter. The theory that most of the matter in the Universe is completely invisible, developed while working at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the 1970s, was subsequently confirmed in the following decades and revolutionised our understanding of the Universe.

Although unjustly denied the Nobel Prize, her legacy includes several prizes in her name as well as a satellite, an asteroid, a ridge on Mars, a galaxy (Rubins Galaxy, UGC 2885) and a major new observatory, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile.

Schmidt specialised in taking the optical spectra of objects known to emit radio waves, exclusively using the 5m Hale Telescope. In 1963 he made a spectacular breakthrough when he realised that the puzzling spectrum of a star-like object at the position of one of Martin Ryles radio sources, 3C273, was highly redshifted.

Therefore, he deduced, it was far beyond our Galaxy. He invented the term quasi-stellar object (that later became shortened to quasar) for these extraordinarily energetic galaxies.

Carolyn S Shoemaker was an American astronomer and one of the worlds foremost hunters of asteroids and comets.

In her lifetime she identified or co-identified over 500 asteroids and 32 comets including, with her astrogeologist husband Eugene Shoemaker and David H Levy, Comet ShoemakerLevy 9. The fragmented comet was observed crashing spectacularly into the planet Jupiter in 1994.

As famous for his science communication as for his experimental results, Carl Sagan began his scientific career with a thesis on the origins of life. He would go on to create the Golden Record shot into interstellar space aboard the Voyager missions, a message to any extraterrestrial civilisations it might encounter, and briefed Apollo astronauts before their flights.

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50 of the greatest, most famous astronomers of all time - Sky at Night Magazine

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Using NASAs James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a threadlike arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the Big Bang.

Lined up like pearls on an invisible string, the 3-million-light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasara galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The researchers believe the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the nearby universe.

The results appear in two papers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This is one of the earliest filamentary structures that people have ever found associated with a distant quasar, says Feige Wang, an assistant research professor at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and lead author of the first paper. Wang adds it is the first time scientists have observed a structure of this kind at such an early time in the universe and in 3D detail.

Galaxies are not scattered randomly across the universe. They gather together not only into clusters and clumps, but form vast interconnected filamentary structures, separated by gigantic barren voids in between.

This cosmic web started out tenuous and became more distinct over time as gravity drew matter together. Embedded in vast oceans of dark matter, galaxies form where dark and regular matter accumulate in localized patches that are denser than their surroundings. Similar to the crests of waves in the ocean, galaxies ride on continuous strings of dark matter known as filaments, says Xiaohui Fan, professor of astronomy at Steward and coauthor of both studies. The newly discovered filament marks the first time such a structure has been observed at a time when the cosmos was just 6% of its current age.

I was surprised by how long and how narrow this filament is, Fan says. I expected to find something, but I didnt expect such a long, distinctly thin structure.

The astronomers made their discovery as part of the ASPIRE project, a large international collaboration led by University of Arizona researchers, with Wang being the principal investigator. The main goal of ASPIREwhich stands for A SPectroscopic survey of biased halos In the Reionization Erais to study the cosmic environments of the earliest black holes. The program will observe 25 quasars that existed within the first billion years after the Big Bang, a time known as the Epoch of Reionization.

The last two decades of cosmology research have given us a robust understanding of how the cosmic web forms and evolves, says team member Joseph Hennawi of the University of California, Santa Barbara. ASPIRE aims to understand how to embed the emergence of the earliest massive black holes into our current story of cosmic structure formation.

Another part of the study investigates the properties of eight quasars in the young universe. The team confirmed that their central black holes, which existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, range in mass from 600 million to 2 billion times the mass of the sun. Astronomers continue seeking evidence to explain how these black holes could grow so large so fast.

To form these supermassive black holes in such a short time, two criteria must be satisfied, says Wang.

First, you need to start growing from a massive seed black hole, he says. Two, even if this seed starts with a mass equivalent of a thousand suns, it needs to accrete a million times more matter at the maximum possible rate in a relatively short time, because our observations caught it at a time when it was still very young.

These unprecedented observations are providing important clues about how black holes are assembled. We have learned that these black holes are situated in massive young galaxies that provide the reservoir of fuel for their growth, says Jinyi Yang, an assistant research professor at Steward, who is leading the study of black holes with ASPIRE and is the first author of the second paper.

The James Webb Space Telescope also provided the best evidence yet of how early supermassive black holes potentially regulate the formation of stars in their galaxies. While supermassive black holes accrete matter, they also can power tremendous outflows of material.

These winds can extend far beyond the black hole itself, on a galactic scale, and can have a significant impact on the formation of stars. Stars form when gas and dust collapse into denser and denser clouds, and this requires the gas to be very cold. Strong winds from black holes emitting large amounts of energy can wreak havoc with that process and thereby suppress the formation of stars in the host galaxy, Yang says.

Such winds have been observed in the nearby universe but have never been directly observed this early in the universe, in the Epoch of Reionization, says Yang. The scale of the wind is related to the structure of the quasar. In the Webb observations, we are seeing that such winds extend throughout an entire galaxy, affecting its evolution.

Source: University of Arizona

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Astronomers identify earliest strands of the 'cosmic web' - Futurity: Research News

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Advancing Astronomy and Astrophysics Discoveries

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on modern astronomy and astrophysics has been nothing short of transformative. As the volume of data generated by telescopes and other observational instruments continues to grow exponentially, AI has emerged as a powerful tool for processing and analyzing this information, leading to new discoveries and a deeper understanding of the universe.

One of the key ways AI is revolutionizing astronomy and astrophysics is through the use of machine learning algorithms. These algorithms are designed to learn from data, making them particularly well-suited for tasks such as pattern recognition and classification. In the context of astronomy, this means that AI can be used to automatically identify and classify celestial objects, such as stars, galaxies, and supernovae, based on their observed properties.

This capability has proven invaluable in the era of large-scale astronomical surveys, which can generate terabytes of data per night. For example, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), one of the most ambitious and influential surveys in the history of astronomy, has produced a wealth of data on millions of celestial objects. By applying machine learning techniques to this data, researchers have been able to identify rare and unusual objects, such as quasars and gravitational lenses, that would have been difficult or impossible to find using traditional methods.

AI has also played a crucial role in the detection and analysis of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by the acceleration of massive objects, such as merging black holes or neutron stars. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its European counterpart, Virgo, have made groundbreaking observations of these elusive phenomena, thanks in large part to the use of AI algorithms for filtering out noise and identifying the telltale signatures of gravitational waves in the detector data.

Another area where AI is making a significant impact is in the search for exoplanets, planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. The Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched in 2009, has discovered thousands of exoplanet candidates by monitoring the brightness of stars and looking for periodic dips in their light curves caused by transiting planets. AI algorithms have been instrumental in sifting through the vast amounts of data generated by Kepler, helping to confirm the existence of many new exoplanets and even uncovering some that were initially missed by human analysts.

The potential applications of AI in astronomy and astrophysics extend far beyond these examples. For instance, AI could be used to optimize the design and operation of telescopes, enabling them to observe more efficiently and capture higher-quality data. AI could also be employed to simulate complex astrophysical phenomena, such as the formation of galaxies or the behavior of matter under extreme conditions, providing insights that would be difficult or impossible to obtain through observation alone.

Despite the many benefits of AI, there are also potential challenges and risks associated with its use in astronomy and astrophysics. One concern is that the reliance on AI could lead to a loss of human expertise, as researchers become more focused on developing and fine-tuning algorithms rather than on understanding the underlying science. Additionally, there is the risk of bias and error in AI algorithms, which could lead to incorrect or misleading results if not properly addressed.

In conclusion, AI has already had a profound impact on modern astronomy and astrophysics, enabling researchers to make new discoveries and gain deeper insights into the universe. As AI technology continues to advance, it is likely to play an even more significant role in shaping the future of these fields. However, it is essential for researchers to remain vigilant about the potential risks and challenges associated with AI, ensuring that it is used responsibly and in a way that complements, rather than supplants, human expertise.

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The Impact of AI on Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics - Fagen wasanni