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Hubble Sees a Spiral Galaxy Edge-On This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 4423. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 4423, a galaxy that lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. In this image, NGC 4423 appears to have quite an irregular, tubular form, so it might be surprising to find out that it is in fact a spiral galaxy. Knowing this, we can make out the denser central bulge of the galaxy, and the less crowded surrounding disk (the part that comprises the spiral arms). 

If NGC 4423 were viewed face-on it would resemble the shape that we most associate with spiral galaxies: the spectacular curving arms sweeping out from a bright center, interspersed with dimmer, darker, less populated regions. But when observing the skies, we are constrained by the relative alignments between Earth and the objects that we are observing.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Mar 08, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms

• Astrophysics
• Astrophysics Division
• Galaxies
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Hubble Space Telescope
• Missions
• The Universe

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arXiv:2303.17676v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Very metal-poor stars ($\rm[Fe/H] $ 16) and obtain 38,000/41,000 additional metal-poor candidates with purity 29\%/52\%, respectively. We make our metal-poor star catalogs publicly available, for further exploration of the metal-poor Milky Way.

arXiv:2403.03974v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present new ALMA observations of CO, CN, CS, HCN and HCO$^{+}$ absorption seen against the bright and compact radio continuum sources of eight massive galaxies. Combined with archival observations, they reveal two distinct populations of molecular clouds, which we identify by combining CO emission and absorption profiles to unambiguously reveal each cloud's direction of motion and likely location. In galaxy disks, we see clouds with low velocity dispersions, low line of sight velocities and a lack of any systemic inflow or outflow. In galactic cores, we find high velocity dispersion clouds inflowing at up to 550 km/s. This provides observational evidence in favour of cold accretion onto galactic centres, which likely contributes to the fuelling of active galactic nuclei. We also see a wide range in the CO(2-1)/CO(1-0) ratios of the absorption lines. This is likely the combined effect of hierarchical substructure within the molecular clouds and continuum sources which vary in size with frequency.

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Science, Volume 383, Issue 6687, Page 1038-1039, March 2024.

Exclusive: Significant discovery, made by James Webb telescope, provokes disagreement over conditions on planet’s surface

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International Women's Day at the IoA

• 13.00 pm-14.00:Keynote Speaker: Ghina Halabi

• 14.00 pm-14.45:Flash Talks: Sandro Tacchella & Alejandra Castro

• 14.45 pm-15.15:Tea, Coffee and Cake

• 15.15 pm-16.30:An Interactive Session on Recognising Accomplishments

• 16.30 pm-16.50: Flash Talk: Greg Cooke

• 16.50 pm-17.00: Closing Remarks

• Speaker:
• Friday 08 March 2024, 13:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, IoA .
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Extra Talks; organiser: iwd.

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Eddington lecture 2024: The Dawn of Galaxy-scale Gravitational Wave Astronomy

For more than 15 years, NANO Grav and other pulsar-timing array collaborations have been carefully monitoring networks of pulsars across the Milky Way. The goal was to find a tell-tale correlation signature amid the data from all those pulsars that would signal the presence of an all-sky background of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves, washing through the Galaxy. At the end of June 2023, the global pulsar-timing array community finally announced its evidence for this gravitational-wave background, along with a series of studies that interpreted this signal as either originating from a population of supermassive black-hole binary systems, or as relics from cosmological processes in the very early Universe. I will describe the journey up to this point (including the integral role that the IoA played), what led to the ultimate breakthrough, how this affects our knowledge of supermassive black holes and the early Universe, and what lies next for gravitational-wave astronomy at light-year wavelengths.

• Speaker: Dr Stephen Taylor, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
• Thursday 07 March 2024, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: eb694.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

Eddington lecture 2024: The Dawn of Galaxy-scale Gravitational Wave Astronomy

For more than 15 years, NANO Grav and other pulsar-timing array collaborations have been carefully monitoring networks of pulsars across the Milky Way. The goal was to find a tell-tale correlation signature amid the data from all those pulsars that would signal the presence of an all-sky background of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves, washing through the Galaxy. At the end of June 2023, the global pulsar-timing array community finally announced its evidence for this gravitational-wave background, along with a series of studies that interpreted this signal as either originating from a population of supermassive black-hole binary systems, or as relics from cosmological processes in the very early Universe. I will describe the journey up to this point (including the integral role that the IoA played), what led to the ultimate breakthrough, how this affects our knowledge of supermassive black holes and the early Universe, and what lies next for gravitational-wave astronomy at light-year wavelengths.

• Speaker: Dr Stephen Taylor, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
• Thursday 07 March 2024, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: eb694.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

International Women's Day at the IoA

• 13.00 pm-14.00:Keynote Speaker: Ghina Halabi

• 14.00 pm-14.45:Flash Talks: Sandro Tacchella & Alejandra Castro

• 14.45 pm-15.15:Tea, Coffee and Cake

• 15.15 pm-16.30:An Interactive Session on Recognising Accomplishments

• 16.30 pm-16.50: Flash Talk: Greg Cooke

• 16.50 pm-17.00: Closing Remarks

• Speaker:
• Friday 08 March 2024, 13:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, IoA .
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Extra Talks; organiser: .

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Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Alvaro Ribas (IOA Cambridge)
• Tuesday 07 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
• Venue: MR14 DAMTP and online.
• Series: DAMTP Astrophysics Seminars; organiser: Roger Dufresne.

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Parity Violation in Cosmology

Parity symmetry is known to be violated in the weak interaction. Do the physical laws behind the unsolved problems of modern cosmology – cosmic inflation, dark matter, and dark energy – also violate parity symmetry? In this talk, we will discuss theoretical and observational possibilities of parity violation in cosmology, a topic that has received much attention in recent years.

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• Monday 11 March 2024, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: CMS, Pav. B, CTC Common Room (B1.19) [Potter Room].
• Series: Cosmology Lunch; organiser: Inigo Zubeldia.

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arXiv:2403.03872v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent observations have found a large number of supermassive black holes already in place in the first few hundred million years after Big Bang. The channels of formation and growth of these early, massive black holes are not clear, with scenarios ranging from heavy seeds to light seeds experiencing bursts of high accretion rate. Here we present the detection, from the JADES survey, of broad Halpha emission in a galaxy at z=6.68, which traces a black hole with mass of ~ 4 * 10^8 Msun and accreting at a rate of only 0.02 times the Eddington limit. The host galaxy has low star formation rate (~ 1 Msun/yr, a factor of 3 below the star forming main sequence). The black hole to stellar mass ratio is ~ 0.4, i.e. about 1,000 times above the local relation, while the system is closer to the local relations in terms of dynamical mass and velocity dispersion of the host galaxy. This object is most likely the tip of the iceberg of a much larger population of dormant black holes around the epoch of reionisation. Its properties are consistent with scenarios in which short bursts of super-Eddington accretion have resulted in black hole overgrowth and massive gas expulsion from the accretion disk; in between bursts, black holes spend most of their life in a dormant state.

arXiv:2403.03244v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The JWST has ushered in a new era in atmospheric characterisations of temperate low-mass exoplanets with recent detections of carbon-bearing molecules in the candidate Hycean world K2-18 b. We investigated JWST observations of the TOI-270 system, with two sub-Neptunes simultaneously transiting the nearby M dwarf during the visit. We report our atmospheric characterisation of the outer planet TOI-270 d, a candidate Hycean world, with JWST transmission spectroscopy using the NIRSpec G395H instrument in the 2.7-5.2 $\mu$m range, combined with previous observations obtained with the HST WFC3 spectrograph (1.1-1.6 $\mu$m). The spectrum reveals strong signatures of CH4 and CO2 at 3.8-4.9$\sigma$ and 2.9-3.9$\sigma$ confidence, respectively, and no evidence of NH3. The abundant CH4 and CO2, at ~0.1-1% mixing ratios, and the non-detection of NH3 are similar to the findings reported for K2-18 b and consistent with predictions for a Hycean world with a planet-wide ocean under a H2-rich atmosphere. We also report evidence of CS2 at a 2.3-3.0$\sigma$ confidence and a potential inference of H2O at 1.6-4.4$\sigma$, depending on the data analysis approach, and discuss possible interpretations of these results. The spectrum does not provide strong constraints on the presence of clouds or hazes in the observable atmosphere, nor any evidence for the effects of stellar heterogeneities, which is consistent with previous studies. For the smaller inner planet TOI-270 b, we find that the spectrum is inconsistent with a featureless spectrum at ~3$\sigma$, showing some preference for an H2-rich atmosphere in a super-Earth. We discuss the implications of our findings and future prospects.

Nature, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07102-y

A population of freezing white dwarf stars maintaining a constant luminosity for a duration comparable with the age of the universe can be explained by a solid–liquid distillation mechanism interrupting cooling for billions of years.

Nature, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07046-3

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Nature, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07227-0

A recently quenched galaxy 700 million years after the Big Bang

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