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The Aurora Borealis

This video explains how particles originating from deep inside the core of the sun creates northern lights, also called aurora borealis, on our planet.

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An Explosion From the Sun

Read the rest of the article here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/07/the-sun-lets-loose-a-huge-explosion/

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Universe's biggest known star discovered by British astronomers

via telegraph.co.uk

...Previously, the heaviest known stars were around 150 times the mass of the Sun, and this was believed to be close to the cosmic size limit.

As stars get more massive the amount of energy created in their cores grows at a faster rate than the force of gravity which holds them together. The torrents of energy produced eventually become so powerful that the stars are torn apart.

This is known as the "Eddington Limit", after the British physicist Arthur Eddington who, in 1919, proved Einstein's theory of relativity by showing that light is bent by gravity.

It was believed that the Eddington Limit was reached at around 150 solar masses. However, R136a1 has been measured at 265 solar masses, and 9 million times its brightness, with a surface temperature of 95,000°F (53,000 K).

Articles:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7902627/Universes-biggest-known-star...

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/98927839.html

Full analysis:

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1030/eso1030.pdf

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Slingshot

There are two possible explanations for this 'slingshot' in space: kickback by a triple black hole system, or the effects of gravitational waves produced after two supermassive black holes merged a few million years earlier.

The discovery of this object comes from a large, multi-wavelength survey, known as the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS). This survey includes data from Chandra, HST, XMM- Newton, as well as ground-based observatories. Of the 2,600 X-ray sources found in COSMOS, only one -- named CID-42 and located in a galaxy about 3.9 billion light years away -- coincides with two very close, compact optical sources.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al. Optical: NASA/STScI

via nasa.gov

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Double Black Holes

This image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the central region of the starburst galaxy M82 and contains two bright X-ray sources of special interest. New studies with Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton show that these two sources may be intermediate-mass black holes, with masses in between those of the stellar-mass and supermassive variety. These "survivor" black holes avoided falling into the center of the galaxy and could be examples of the seeds required for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies, including the one in the Milky Way.

This is the first case where good evidence for more than one mid-sized black hole exists in a single galaxy. The evidence comes from how their X-ray emission varies over time and analysis of their X-ray brightness and spectra, i.e., the distribution of X-rays with energy. These results are interesting because they may help address the mystery of how supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies form. M82 is located about 12 million light years from Earth and is the nearest place to us where the conditions are similar to those in the early Universe, with lots of stars forming.

Multiple observations of M82 have been made with Chandra beginning soon after launch. The Chandra data shown here were not used in the new research because the X-ray sources are so bright that some distortion is introduced into the X-ray spectra. To combat this, the pointing of Chandra is changed so that images of the sources are deliberately blurred, producing fewer counts in each pixel.

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The Aurora Borealis

An Explosion From the Sun

Universe's biggest known star discovered by British astronomers

Slingshot

Double Black Holes