Tea Leaves LA

“Spitzer captured the range of activities happening in this violent cloud of stellar birth. We have evidence that the massive stars are triggering the birth of new ones in the dark filaments, in addition to the pillars, but we still have more work to do.”
                                  —Joseph Hora
                                 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a new view of an area in our galaxy called Cygnus X. It is the most active area for star formation in the Milky Way.

The lower left and right boxes on the bottom image show brand new stars, which show up as red dots due to the heat they emit that burns up the surrounding dust cloud. The lower right box also shows a luminous blue variable, visible as a blue dot within the red orb.

Distant Black Hole Eats Star for Breakfast, Creates Brightest Gamma Ray Ever Observed

NASA’s Swift satellite captured photos of an event scientists believe only happens once every billion years.  Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom claims he and his colleagues observed three more gamma-ray bursts after the initial burst. The high-energy ray, which has been burning for weeks, is located 3.8 billion light years away.

“The only explanation that so far fits the size, intensity, time scale, and level of fluctuation of the observed event, is that a massive black at the very centre of that galaxy has pulled in a large star and ripped it apart by tidal disruption. The spinning black hole then created the two jets one of which pointed straight to earth.”

—Dr. Andrew Levan

NASA has released millions of photos taken by its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which discovered of 30,000 new comets and asteroids during its mission.

Scientists and astronomers will spend the next few years examining the data collected by WISE. Amateurs can view the data too on this site, though I found the search engine a bit difficult to navigate. An easy-to-navigate version of the gallery can be found here.