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WASHINGTON — Dec 17, `07 — A powerful jet from a super massive black hole is blasting a nearby galaxy, according to new findings from NASA observatories. This never-before witnessed galactic violence may have a profound effect on planets in the jet’s path and trigger a burst of star formation in its destructive wake.

Known as 3C321, the system contains two galaxies in orbit around each other. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory show both galaxies contain super massive black holes at their centers, but the larger galaxy has a jet emanating from the vicinity of its black hole. The smaller galaxy apparently has swung into the path of this jet.

This “death star” galaxy was discovered through the combined efforts of both space and ground-based telescopes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope were part of the effort. The Very Large Array telescope, Socorro, N.M., and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) telescopes in the United Kingdom also were needed for the finding.

“We’ve seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we’ve seen one punch into another galaxy like we’re seeing here,” said Dan Evans, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the study. “This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling.”

Jets from super massive black holes produce high amounts of radiation, especially high-energy X-rays and gamma-rays, which can be lethal in large quantities. The combined effects of this radiation and particles traveling at almost the speed of light could severely damage the atmospheres of planets lying in the path of the jet. For example, protective layers of ozone in the upper atmosphere of planets could be destroyed.

Jets produced by super massive black holes transport enormous amounts of energy far from black holes and enable them to affect matter on scales vastly larger than the size of the black hole. Learning more about jets is a key goal for astrophysical research.

The effect of the jet on the companion galaxy is likely to be substantial, because the galaxies in 3C321 are extremely close at a distance of only about 20,000 light years apart. They lie approximately the same distance as Earth is from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

A bright spot in the Very Large Array and MERLIN images shows where the jet has struck the side of the galaxy, dissipating some of the jet’s energy. The collision disrupted and deflected the jet.

Another unique aspect of the discovery in 3C321 is how relatively short-lived this event is on a cosmic time scale. Features seen in the Very Large Array and Chandra images indicate that the jet began impacting the galaxy about one million years ago, a small fraction of the system’s lifetime. This means such an alignment is quite rare in the nearby universe, making 3C321 an important opportunity to study such a phenomenon.

It is possible the event is not all bad news for the galaxy being struck by the jet. The massive influx of energy and radiation from the jet could induce the formation of large numbers of stars and planets after its initial wake of destruction is complete. More at NASA.

PASADENA, Calif — Dec 06, ‘07 –  The California Institute of Technology and the University of California have received a $200 million commitment over nine years from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation toward the further development and construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). Funding under this commitment will be shared equally between the two universities, with matching gifts from the two institutions expected to bring the total to $300 million. When built, TMT will be the largest telescope in the world.

The telescope design is being developed by a U.S.-Canadian team that includes the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), with completion of the design development expected by March 2009.

With the TMT, astronomers will be able to locate and analyze the light from the first stellar systems born soon after the Big Bang, determine the physical processes governing the formation and evolution of galaxies like our own Milky Way, study planet formation around nearby stars, and make observations that test the fundamental laws of physics. However, it is the unexpected discoveries that TMT will make that will likely be the most exciting.

TMT will consist of a primary mirror with 492 individual 1.45-meter segments that together measure 30 meters in diameter, providing more than eight times the collecting area of the current largest telescope. All segments will be under precision computer control so that they will work together as a single mirror. This revolutionary technology was developed for the 10-meter mirrors in the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

The TMT will not only be the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world, but it will also be at the forefront of technology in virtually every aspect of its design. Adaptive optics (AO) will allow the TMT to achieve a resolution superior to that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The TMT AO system will use six laser beams to create six luminous spots in a layer of sodium atoms high in Earth’s upper atmosphere. These bright artificial stars serve as references for measuring the turbulence in the atmosphere, allowing the AO system to compensate for blurring of starlight by Earth’s fluctuating atmosphere. This technology was pioneered at the Lick Observatory 3-meter telescope and has been developed further at the Palomar 5-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes. More at Caltech.

IceCube is a telescope under construction at the South Pole at the US Amundsen-Scott station.

It is an unusual telescope in many respects.  It is buried a mile down in the Antarctic ice sheet, rather than situated at the surface.

IceCube looks down, into (and through) the earth, rather than up into the sky.  And finally, the “light” seen by this telescope is composed of individual fundamental particles called neutrinos.  In a real sense, IceCube is opening a new window on the universe and will map the neutrino sky.

Upon completion in 2010, IceCube will consist of over 4000 sensors located in a volume of about one cubic kilometer of highly transparent ice situated between 1500 and 2500 meters below the surface.

These sensors will detect the optical light emitted by other fast-moving electrically-charged particles (electrons, muons) moving upward, each of which is the result of a collision with a high-energy neutrino that penetrated the earth. IceCube will determine the directions from which the neutrinos, which have no electrical charge and practically no mass, came to us and how much energy each carried. (See the animation)

This is a new kind of astronomy, one that we hope will tell us new things about our universe.  For example, one of the goals of high-energy neutrino astronomy is to discover the origin of the extremely high-energy cosmic rays that bombard our earth.  We believe we can use neutrinos to identify the sites in the distant universe where these cosmic rays are produced.

IceCube is being built by an international collaboration of scientists and engineers.  The US funding comes from the National Science Foundation and the lead institution is the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a member of this collaboration and has several key responsibilities in the scientific and technical effort surrounding IceCube and its predecessor, AMANDA (the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array). More at IceCube.LBL.gov

GREENBELT, Md., Oct. 25, ‘07 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will use a new advanced technology network interface called “SpaceWire” that enables the components on the telescope to work more efficiently and more reliably with each other.

SpaceWire is a standard for high-speed communication links between satellite components. Originally developed by the European Space Agency, SpaceWire has been adopted and improved by a team at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) and Command and Data Handling (ICDH) engineering team has developed a small and very low power microchip that sends and receives SpaceWire signals at speeds of over 200 mega-bits per second.

The new higher bandwidth from SpaceWire enables the JWST ISIM to support the mission’s science instruments which employ 66 million detector pixels. This is the largest number of pixels ever used on a space telescope, and it will allow JWST to study more of the universe. Handling the large volume of data from these detectors presented a unique challenge for the JWST ICDH team. The development of this new network interface enables the JWST science instruments to realize their full scientific discovery potential, and will permit future NASA mission planners to consider use of more detectors with an even larger number of pixels to see even more of the universe.

SpaceWire is a standard for high-speed links and networks for use onboard a spacecraft, easing the interconnection of sensors, mass-memories and processing units. The SpaceWire standard provides many benefits. It helps facilitate the construction of high-performance onboard data handling systems, reduces system integration costs, increases compatibility between data handling equipment and subsystems, and encourages re-use of data handling equipment across several different missions.

To understand the benefit of SpaceWire, you can compare the speed of a dial-up modem to a high-speed broadband Internet connection. SpaceWire connects multiple spacecraft components on super-fast links to get a quicker result.

Goddard’s version of the SpaceWire technology has also dramatically accelerated the development of the JWST instrument electronics. The JWST ICDH team delivered the SpaceWire technology — which is packaged in a digital, low power (1.5W), high-speed (66Mbps) Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) computer chip — to JWST partners including prime contractor Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Canadian Space Agency.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a 21st century space observatory that will peer back more than 13 billion years in time to understand the formation of galaxies, stars and planets and the evolution of our own solar system. It is expected to launch in 2013. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The JWST