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The Astronomy Thread.

Brand new black hole image will blow your mind

The latest image from the Event Horizon Telescope. It now shows swirly lines indicating the directions in which the light is polarized. (This is Sagittarius A*, the SMBH at the center of the Milky Way)

Looks more like water going down a drain than some artists impressions of accretion disks. Not sure what to make of it.
 
 
This is probably a better link because it comes from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration's own website:

Astronomers Unveil Strong Magnetic Fields Spiraling at the Edge of Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Here are two published papers:

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. VII. Polarization of the Ring

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. VIII. Physical Interpretation of the Polarized Ring

The second paper seems to answer your question:
On the other hand, if we attribute the mean RM to an external Faraday screen, then the motion of accreting material is inferred to be clockwise, and one model passes all applied total intensity and polarimetric constraints: a model with strong magnetic fields, a spin parameter of 0.94, and an inclination of 150°.
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I anticipate a video from Dr. Becky to explain all this at some point. I believe that an inclination of 0° would correspond to edge on (the equator) while 180° would be from directly above a pole. So 150° is close to a polar view. If we think of it in terms of our own planet, the rotation would be clockwise if seen from above the South Pole and counterclockwise from above the North Pole.
 
Was Io ever a serious consideration? IIRC the radiation levels alone would fry anything biological in minutes.

The article is very interesting, |Jupiters moons are just intriguing to me.
 
The Atheist said:
No, I was being facetious on that front. Just an interesting article.
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When reading up on it I discovered there is apparently a newish scify movie that does use io as a refuge for humans after earth is over polluted. I guess it is a way to solve the population problem
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjeenyw8rd2o

Earliest and most distant galaxy ever observed

Astronomers say the most interesting aspect of the latest observation is not so much the great distance involved - as amazing as that is - but rather the size and brightness of JADES-GS-z14-0.

Webb measures the galaxy to be more than 1,600 light years across. Many of the most luminous galaxies generate the majority of their light via gas falling into a supermassive black hole. But the scale of JADES-GS-z14-0 indicates that is not the explanation in this case. Instead, the researchers believe the light is being produced by young stars.

"This much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun! This raises the question: how can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in less than 300 million years?" said Webb astronomers Stefano Carniani and Kevin Hainline.
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Intriguing.
 
Neat scale visualization video:



Just how big is the Milky Way galaxy? This video shows a nice way to think about it on a human scale. It's about 7 minutes long.

If the diameter of the galaxy were as large as the United States, our solar system out to Neptune would fit nicely on the tip of your finger.
 
Pixel42 said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjeenyw8rd2o



Intriguing.
Click to expand...

Indeed. JWST is telling us much that will require amended galaxy formation models. However, just for comparison, the Milky Way is ~ 100 000 light years across. And the mass of the Milky Way (not including dark matter) is tens of billions of solar masses. So, these early galaxies are very small by comparison, both in mass and in areal extent.
 
jonesdave116 said:
Indeed. JWST is telling us much that will require amended galaxy formation models. However, just for comparison, the Milky Way is ~ 100 000 light years across. And the mass of the Milky Way (not including dark matter) is tens of billions of solar masses. So, these early galaxies are very small by comparison, both in mass and in areal extent.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that would even make it smaller, and less massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, a "dwarf" galaxy. The SMC has a radius of 3,500 ly (7,000 across) and contains about 3 billion stars with a total mass of about 7 billion solar masses (I'm not sure whether that includes dark matter or not). The LMC, also a "dwarf" galaxy, is even bigger.

So when they say massive, they mean "for the early universe, relative to what our models predicted," not compared to current galaxies.
 
I wonder if there are any intelligent civilizations in the dwarf galaxies. If there are, I bet they don't think of their own galaxies as dwarf galaxies, but instead call galaxies like the Milky Way "mega galaxies" or "super galaxies" or some such thing. Dwarf galaxies after all outnumber galaxies like our own or larger.
 
It's been cloudy last 2 night, probably tomorrow as well--Tuesday looks clear here so I will be headed out to the same spot I shot the last visible comet (Garden of the Gods). I shot Tsuchinshan to the east last week but it was *very* faint, faintest of the 7 comets I've photographed. But judging from the dozens of online pics of this one I've seen today, I just need clear skies for the evening return!
 
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