The Hubble Space Telescope is located over 300 miles (500 kilometers) over Earth and separated by tens of millions of light-years from many of the objects it studies. Even as the world below grappled with another year of illness, weird and wonderful space discoveries flooded in from above, with astronomy revealing a treasure trove of extraterrestrial planets.
Here are 10 of the most awesome, extreme and enigmatic space structures discovered in 2021.
1. There is a star in the sky.
The Hubble Heritage Team is a part of the NASA/ESA/HEIC.
No one can hear you in space. The remains of an ancient supernova that have taken on a shape instantly recognizable to fans of the classic video game are located in the Pac-Man remnant. The Large Magellanic Cloud is located 163,000 light-years from the Milky Way and is where the object, officially known as N 63A, came from. This shape was created by the dispersal of superheated gas. According to NASA researchers, the bright "power pellets" are young stars, forged from the same gas cloud that bore the progenitor star of Pac-Man. Looks like the star ran out of energy.
Stunning supernova remnant looks like a video game.
There are some good videos for you.
2. A ghost jellyfish is risen from the dead.
ICRAR/Curtin University has an image credit.
The universe is bound together by gravity. They can hold thousands of galaxies, enormous clouds of hot gas and sometimes the ghost of a jellyfish. The southern sky of the Abell 2877 is 300 million light-years from Earth. The Cosmic Jelly is visible only in a narrow band of radio light.
A study published March 17 in The Astrophysical Journal states that no structure of this size had ever been seen in such a narrow band of light. It is possible that this Cosmic Jelly is actually a "Radio Phoenix", a Cosmic structure born from a high-energy explosion that fades over millions of years as the structure expands and its electrons lose energy, and finally gets reenergized by another Cosmic catacly. The structure glows brightly in certain frequencies but dims quickly in all others. It's a ghost, a jellyfish and a Phoenix in one.
Astronomers see a radio jellyfish rise from the dead in the southern sky.
3. The planet is rare.
The image is from the ESO/L. Calada.
Don't sneeze! The hunter constellation's great, gassy nose is home to the rare type of planet that is perched on it.
The star system, known as GW Ori, is located about 1,300 light-years from Earth and has three rings that look like bull's-eye in the sky. There are three stars at the center of that bull's-eye, two of which are locked in a tight circle with each other. The researchers built on previous data to show that a wobbly alignment in the star system's three rings is almost certainly caused by a large Jupiter-size planet inside one of the rings. This enormous world will become the first "circum triple" planet, or planet circling three stars, ever detected in the universe, and will give Tatooine a real run for its money.
There is a planet with three suns that may be in Orion's nose.
4. A black hole energy cannon.
Sophia Dagnello, the NRAO/AUI/NSF has an image credit.
The first photograph of a supermassive black hole, a gargantuan object about 6.5 billion times as massive as the sun and located 55 million light-years from Earth, was released in 2019. The black hole's center is being blasted out of by the enormous jet of matter and energy using the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico. The jet was contorted into a double helix structure by a corkscrew-shaped magnetic field that blasts out of the black hole and into space for nearly 3,300 light-years. The longest magnetic field ever detected in a jet is the most common phenomenon in the universe, and it provides a fresh view.
A black hole jet is shaped like a helix.
5. An invisible barrier is shielding the center of the universe.
The image is from NASA.
The center of the Milky Way is a giant particle collider, shooting beams of charged matter into the universe. The density of Cosmic rays near the center was mapped in a Nov. 9 study in the journal Nature Communications. The team speculated about the source of the Cosmic Ray Barrier, but said it could be a mess of magnetic fields related to the Sagittarius A* black hole.
Astronomers have found a huge barrier between the center of the sea and the Cosmic Ray.
6. A huge yard of ancient galaxies.
The image was taken by the Large Binocular Telescope. Koyama, Y. et al.
The discovery of a massive "shipyard" where galaxies are built is similar to the one our Milky Way grew up in. A part of the universe that is only 3 billion years old is being placed in a giant structure that contains more than 60 galaxies. In regions of space where long threads of gas, known as filaments, crisscross, providing a buffet of hydrogen for gravity to coalesce into stars and galaxies, Protoclusters like this one form. The researchers said that the young galaxies are growing at a fast pace. The finding shows that ancient clusters were more efficient at assembling the foundations of the modern universe than researchers had thought.
Theshipyard of ancient galaxies was discovered 11 billion light-years away.
7. A 500-light-year-wide "cavity" in the sky.
The Center for Astrophysics is a part of Harvard and the Smithsonian.
Two clouds of gas are side by side in the fair. These enormous provinces of star-forming gas stretch across the sky, and seem to form a bridge between the constellations. It's a tale of star-crossed love, and it's also an optical illusion.
New 3D maps of the region show that the canoodling clouds are hundreds of light-years apart, separated by an empty orb. A study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters states that the chasm is 500 light-years wide and was created by a catastrophic supernova millions of years ago. The researchers wrote that the explosion probably accelerated star formation on the edges of the supershell, giving this star-crossed tragedy a happy ending.
Astronomers have discovered enormous 'cavity' in the Milky Way.
8. The solar system is surrounded by a twisted magnetic tunnel.
The image was taken at the radio Astrophysical Observatory.
Astronomers don't know why Earth and the rest of the solar system may be trapped inside a magnetic tunnel. A tube of vast magnetized tendrils, 1,000 light-years long and invisible to the naked eye, may encircle the solar system, according to a paper on the preprint database arXiv. The team's investigation into two of the bright radio-emitting gas structures in our galactic neighborhood, the North Polar Spur and the Fan Region, revealed that they may be linked, even though they are located on different sides of the sky. The researchers said that the glue that links these structures is long, twisting tendrils of charged particles and magnetic fields, like a "curving tunnel" that wraps around everything in between. It's not clear where this tunnel came from, but tendrils like these could be a part of an all-encompassing web of magnetic-field lines.
Earth may be trapped inside a tunnel.
9. The first view of a star.
The image is from NASA and M. Weiss.
Black holes are messy eaters. The black hole's extreme gravity stretches the star into a long noodle shape when it's too close to one of the objects. In May, a black hole located 750 million light-years away from Earth trapped a star in its clutches, making it the first time this process has happened directly. The bright flash of light, X-rays and radio waves produced by the disastrous encounter could be seen by telescopes on Earth. The absorption lines around the black hole's pole showed a long strand of light wrapped around the black hole, like a ball of yarn. The researchers concluded that they must have seen a stellar spaghetti in action because most absorption lines appear near the black hole's equator. How do they send a napkin to another universe?
The Hapless star wasspaghettified by a black hole. The gory show was captured by astronomer.
The image is from Our Space.
For an object much closer to home than any others described this year, how about a "mysterious hut" standing proudly on the far side of the moon? The Yutu 2 rover spotted a cube-shaped object just above the horizon. Is it an alien obelisk like "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Is it like one of the moon's many boulders? It will take Yutu two or three months to get a closer look, according to the China National Space Administration. We will be watching the sky optimistically.
China is investigating a hut on the far side of the moon.
Live Science published the original article.
