Pictor A is a galaxy located about 500 million light years from Earth. A supermassive black hole is located at its center and generates a huge jet of particles traveling at nearly the speed of light into the intergalactic space, displaying a continuous X-ray emission over a distance of 300,000 light years.
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources, are sources that are less luminous than Active Galactic Nuclei but more luminous than any known stellar process. Their origin remains unknown.
In June 2015 astronomers detected the brightest supernova that has ever been observed, known now as ASASSN-15lh. It is brighter than 570 billion Suns and 100 times brighter than ordinary supernovae.
The sources that caused the re-ionization era of the universe, which followed the dark ages, is still an open question in observational cosmology. A recent study from a team of astronomers tries to shed light on this issue.
Astronomers observed the most luminous quasar in the universe, with a luminosity that exceeds 350 trillion times the luminosity of our Sun. The quasar lies at a distance that light needs 12.5 billion years to travel to us. Further study of the object revealed an extremely turbulent behaviour that may explain its extreme luminosity.
On Friday, January 22, NASA invites media for live interviews with scientists and engineers working on James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) the successor to Hubble space Telescope (HST). The audience will have the opportunity to discuss the technology used in building the largest and most powerful space telescope.
XMM is an X-ray space telescope with an unprecedented effective area. The largest XMM project is the XMM-XXL. XXL’s goal is to study the clusters of galaxies that are governed by the dark matter and dark energy and therefore reveal the mysteries of the dark side of the Universe. The XXL team consists of over 100 astronomers from around the world and recently released 13 papers, presenting their first results.
On 28th September, India launched their first satellite dedicated to astronomy, ASTROSAT. The satellite will study astrophysical phenomena over a wide range of the ElectroMagnetic spectrum. From visible and ultraviolet (UV) to X-rays and Gamma-rays. The aim of the observatory is to study star-birth regions and high-energy processes, such as binary star systems of neutron stars and black holes, as well as γ-ray bursts (video).
High Energy Astrophysics, i.e. X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, is a very active domain in Europe with 26 institutes/universities involved. AHEAD is a project (Activities for the High Energy Astrophysics Domain) which objective is to integrate national efforts in this research area to keep the community at the cutting edge of science and technology.
