February 2015 Free to members, subscriptions $12 for 12 issues Volume 42, Number 2 Comet Lovejoy (C2014/Q2) is seen in this spectacular image by Kaz Fuseya taken from Julian, Cali- fornia (north of San Diego) on January 20, 2015. Lovejoy may still be seen in the evening sky this month. OCA CLUB MEETING STAR PARTIES COMING UP The free and open club meeting will The Black Star Canyon site will open on The next session of the Beginners be held February 13 at 7:30 PM in the February 14. The Anza site will be open on Class will be held at the Heritage Mu- Irvine Lecture Hall of the Hashinger February 14. Members are encouraged to seum of Orange County at 3101 West Science Center at Chapman University check the website calendar for the latest Harvard Street in Santa Ana on Febru- in Orange. This month’s speaker is Dr. updates on star parties and other events. ary 6. The following class will be held Andrew Benson from UC Irvine. The March 6. topic for this month’s presentation is Please check the website calendar for the “To The Ends of Galaxies: How Do The outreach events this month! Volunteers are GOTO SIG: TBA Smallest Galaxies Form?” always welcome! Astro-Imagers SIG: Feb. 10, Mar. 10 Remote Telescopes: TBA You are also reminded to check the web NEXT MEETINGS: March 13, April 10 Astrophysics SIG: Feb. 20, Mar. 20 site frequently for updates to the calendar Dark Sky Group: TBA of events and other club news. Minor mergers have massive consequences for black holes By Dr. Ethan Siegel When you think of our sun, the nearest star to our world, you think of an isolated entity, with more than four light years separating it from its next nearest neighbor. But it wasn't always so: billions of years ago, when our sun was first created, it very likely formed in concert with thousands of other stars, when a giant molecular cloud containing perhaps a million times the mass of our solar system col- lapsed. While the vast majority of stars that the universe forms— some ninety-five percent—are the mass of our sun or smaller, a rare but significant fraction are ultra-massive, containing tens or even hundreds of times the mass our star contains. When these stars run out of fuel in their cores, they explode in a fantastic Type II supernova, where the star's core collapses. In the most massive cases, this forms a black hole. Over time, many generations of stars—and hence, many black holes—form, with the majority eventually migrating towards the centers of their host galaxies and merging together. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, houses a supermassive black hole that weighs in at about four million solar masses, while our big sis- ter, Andromeda, has one nearly twenty times as massive. But even relatively isolated galaxies Images credit: NGC 3393 in the optical (L) by M. Malkan (UCLA), HST, NASA (L); NGC didn't simply form from the 3393 in the X-ray and optical (R), composite by NASA / CXC / SAO / G. Fabbiano et al. (X- monolithic collapse of an isolat- ray) and NASA/STScI (optical). ed clump of matter, but by hierarchical mergers of smaller galaxies over tremendous timescales. If galaxies with large amounts of stars all have black holes at their centers, then we should be able to see some fraction of Milky Way-sized galaxies with not just one, but multiple supermassive black holes at their center! It was only in the early 2000s that NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was able to find the first binary supermassive black hole in a galaxy, and that was in an ultra-luminous galaxy with a double core. Many other examples were discov- ered since, but for a decade they were all in ultra-massive, active galaxies. That all changed in 2011, with the discovery of two active, massive black holes at the center of the regular spiral galaxy NGC 3393, a galaxy that must have under- gone only minor mergers no less than a billion years ago, where the black hole pair is separated by only 490 light years! It's only in the cores of active, X-ray emitting galaxies that we can detect binary black holes like this. Examples like NGC 3393 and IC 4970 are not only confirming our picture of galaxy growth and formation, but are teaching us that super- massive relics from ancient, minor mergers might persist as standalone entities for longer than we ever thought! Check out some cool images and artist reconstructions of black holes from Chandra: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/ category/blackholes.html Kids can learn all about Black Holes from this cool animation at NASA’s Space Place: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/black- holes. 2 AstroSpace Update February 2015 Gathered by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources ALMA (radiotelescope array) was used to make detailed observations of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the star known as HD 107146, and found an unexpected increase in the concentration of millimeter-size dust grains in the disk’s outer reaches. This in- crease, which begins remarkably far about 8 billion miles (13 billion km) from the host star, may be the result of Pluto-size planetesi- mals stirring up the region, causing smaller objects to collide and blast themselves apart. Dust in debris disks typically comes from material left over from the formation of planets. Very early in the life of the disk, this dust is continuously replenished by collisions of larger bodies, such as comets and asteroids. In mature systems with fully formed planets, comparatively little dust remains. In be- tween these 2 ages, certain models predict that the concentration of dust would be much denser in the most distant regions of the disk. This is precisely what ALMA has found. This is the opposite of what is seen in younger primordial disks where the dust is denser near the star. According to current computer simulations, the density of dust higher in the outer regions of the disk can only be ex- plained by the presence of recently formed Pluto-size bodies. Their gravity would disturb smaller planetesimals, causing more fre- quent collisions that generate the dust. The data also show a possible dip in the dust about ¾ billion miles wide (1.2 billion km), be- ginning about 2.5 times the distance of Neptune from our Sun. This dip could be a gap in the disk, which would indicate a planet sweeping the area clear of debris. The star is of particular interest to astronomers because it is in many ways a younger version of our Sun. It represents a period of transition from a solar system’s early life to more mature stages where planets have finished form- ing. The star is about 90 light-years away in Coma Berenices. It is about 100 million years old. ALMA was also used to observe binary protostars (stars still forming), and found spiral arms of molecular gas and dust around them. Compared to single star formation, our understanding of binary star formation has been limited. However, more than half of stars with a mass similar to our Sun are known to be binaries. Some recent observations have been made of binary protostars, but not with the resolution and sensitivity of ALMA. The new observations showed a gas component associated with each binary star and a disk surrounding both stars, with a radius of 300 AU (1 AU is the Sun-Earth distance). This is about 10 times the size of Neptune’s orbit. To understand these features, the research team constructed a computer simulation of binary formation using a supercomput- er. The results show that the baby twin stars shake the surrounding disk and induce the falling gas motion to feed the materials to the baby twins. Hubble Space Telescope has measured the velocity, composition and temperature of the expanding gas inside the galactic outflows from the Milky Way known as the Fermi bubbles. Hubble probed the light from a distant quasar to analyze the Fermi bubbles as the quasar light passed through. The outflow was produced by some vio- lent event that happened about 2 million years ago in the Milky Way core. Gasses and other material were driven outward at 2 million mph (3 million km/h). The gas on the near side of the bubble is moving toward us and the gas on the far side is traveling away. The Hubble spec- trograph detected silicon, carbon, and aluminum, indicat- ing that the gas is enriched in the heavy elements that are produced inside stars. The temperature of the gas is about 17,500°F (9700°C), which is much cooler than most of the super-hot gas in the outflow, thought to be about 18 million °F (10 million °C), from X-ray data. Now we are witnessing the result: billowing clouds of gas tow- ering about 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy. The enormous structure was discovered 5 years ago as a gamma-ray glow. The features have since been ob- served in X-rays and radio waves. The Hubble observations were the 1st to measure the velocity and composition. Astronomers have 3 proposed 2 possible origins for the lobes: a firestorm of star birth at the Milky Way’s center, or the eruption of its supermassive black hole. This is the 1st result in a survey of 20 quasars whose light passes through gas inside or just outside the Fermi bubbles.