September’s Stellar Space Simulations and Images
NASA’s latest visualization of a black hole.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman
(Inside Science) -- This month, astronomers explored stellar oddities that remain shrouded in mystery. An engulfing simulation of a black hole showcases a mind-boggling manipulation of light around a huge gravitational sinkhole. An ancient star cluster that moves slowly through space still holds secrets about its formation. And models of Venus’ climate suggest how our now searing hot planetary neighbor may once have held liquid water.
This is NASA’s latest visualization of a black hole. A turbulent disk of glowing gas churns around the black hole, showing its extreme gravity as it bends, redirects and distorts the light from different parts of the gas disk. From this sideways perspective, the greatest amount of distortion can be seen. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman )
On the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, this gathering of stars slowly moves through space held together only by gravity. This is NGC 1466, a globular cluster located 160,000 light-years away. At 13.1 billion years old, it is almost as ancient as the universe itself. The Hubble Space Telescope imaged NGC 1466 this month to take a look into the formation and evolution of star clusters. (ESA/Hubble & NASA )
ESA/Hubble & NASA
It seems popular to speculate if Mars ever held liquid water on its surface. But it might not be the only other planet in our system to have had it. Astronomers also wonder if Venus could have been habitable. This artist’s representation imagines a Venus with water, which might have existed over 700 million years ago. (NASA )
Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to detect the very first fast radio burst to have passed through a galactic halo. This artist’s impression depicts the fast radio burst (yellow) traveling through space and reaching Earth, on the bottom right. (ESO/M. Kornmesser )
ESO/M. Kornmesser
This month, the Gemini Observatory captured this two-color composite image of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) -- the first interstellar comet ever seen. The photo seems blurred because it combines four 60-second exposures. The spectrograph on the Gemini North Telescope kept its lens on the comet as it moved, making the comet appear stationary. The blue and red dashes are background stars that seem to streak due to the motion of the comet. (Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA )
