NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory might have spotted one. Planets in other galaxies are all over science fiction, and while they probably do exist, we haven’t found another Vulcan or Betazed just yet. Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.Exoplanets seem to materialize out of nowhere all the time, but every single one of them has been found in our own galaxy. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.Īdditional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.Īlso Available: Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only. Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. To learn more, see the UC-Berkeley news story "Forget Planet X! New technique could pinpoint Galaxy X." (Date of Image: January 2011)Ĭredit: Sukanya Chakrabarti, Florida Atlantic University "This approach has broad implications for many fields of physics and astronomy-for the indirect detection of dark matter as well as dark matter-dominated dwarf galaxies, planetary dynamics and for galaxy evolution driven by satellite impacts," she said. Her mathematical analysis correctly predicted the mass and location of these satellites. Collaborating with other researchers, some of who are funded by NSF, Chakrabarti looked at data for the Whirlpool Galaxy, which has a companion galaxy one-third its size, and NGC 1512, a barred spiral galaxy with a satellite one-hundredth its size. Sukanya Chakrabarti, a postdoctoral fellow and theoretical astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a mathematical method to find dark satellite galaxies by analyzing the ripples in the hydrogen gas distribution in spiral galaxies. Many large galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to have satellite galaxies that are too dim to see because they are dominated by dark matter. The VLA is part of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Analysis of perturbations in the hydrogen distribution can be used to predict the location of such satellites in particular, those satellites that are composed primarily of dark matter and are thus too faint to be detected easily. The distribution of HI hydrogen in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)-as determined by THINGS (The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey), a survey conducted by the Very Large Array (VLA)-extends far beyond the visible stars in the galaxy and its satellite NGC 5195 (marked by cross), that is situated in the short arm of the spiral. Hydrogen Distribution in Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |