Light from the Darkness

This evocative image shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). It is likely that the Sun formed in a  similar star formation region more than four billion years ago. This picture was taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile and is the best image ever taken of this little-known object. Photo credit: ESO/F. Comeron, Note: For more information, see Light from the Darkness.Lupus 3 Nebula and Associated Stars

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Milky Way to inevitably merge with Andromeda Nebula – NASA

According to NASA, the merger of two neighbouring Galaxies, namely the Milky Way, of which the Solar System is a part and the Andromeda Nebula, is inevitable, since the Galaxies are approaching each other at some 400,000 kilometres per hour.But the Earth will not get destroyed, nor will humanity suffer in the process, if humans still inhabit the Earth by then. NASA officials said this during a news conference on Thursday. Tags: Milky Way, News, World, Sci-Tech, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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A star that spins at 600km per second!

Scientists have for the first time discovered the fastest-rotating massive star, which spins at the speed of 600 kilometers per second at the equator and could be the progenitor of some of the brightest explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts. The rotational velocity is so high that the star is nearly tearing apart due to centrifugal forces. The observations were made at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, as part of a survey of the heaviest and brightest stars in a region called the Tarantula Nebula. The Tarantula Nebula is a region of star formation located in a neighbouring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160,000 light years from Earth. The reported star, VFTS 102, is extremely hot and luminous, shining about 100,000 times more brightly than the sun. According to the research team, this star had a violent past and was ejected from a double star system by its exploding companion star. Matteo Cantiello and collaborators explained that stars could reach such rapid rotation via a ‘cosmic dance’ with another star so close that gravity strips gas from its surface. “This gas falls onto the companion star, increasing the mass and spinning it up,” said Cantiello. “Similar to a tennis ball spinning fast after being hit by a glancing blow, a star rotates quickly after being hit off-center by the in-falling gas.” The star is unusual not only because it rotates so fast, but also because it is moving away from its neighbouring stars at a velocity of about 70,000 miles per hour, or 30 kilometers per second. “Having been part of a binary system could explain this space oddity,” said Cantiello. The star is located close to a pulsar and a supernova remnant, which may be left over from the companion star that once spun-up the observed star. Cantiello said that this star might produce dramatic fireworks as it dies. The study has been recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Source: Hindustan Times

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