Doubling the Number of Known Gravitational Lenses
Machine learning key to discovery of over 1200 gravitational lenses
CosmoView Episode 19: Doubling the Number of Known Gravitational Lenses
KPNO/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Legacy Imaging Survey
Gravitational lenses found in the DESI Legacy Survey data. Examples of gravitational lenses found in the DESI Legacy Survey data.
KPNO/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Legacy Imaging Survey
Gravitational lens found in the DESI Legacy Survey data. An example of a gravitational lens found in the DESI Legacy Surveys data. The nearly complete circle in the middle of DESI-015.6763-14.0150 is the image of a background galaxy, gravitationally warped (lensed) by the red galaxy at the center into a near-perfect Einstein ring.
Loading video.
VIDEO: This is CosmoView Episode 18 for press release noirlab2103: Giant Map of the Sky Sets Stage for Ambitious DESI Survey view more
Credit: Images and Videos:
KPNO/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Legacy Imaging Survey, P. Marenfeld, D. Munizaga, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Music: Stellardrone - Airglow.
Astronomers using images from Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory have created the largest ever map of the sky, comprising over a billion galaxies. The ninth and final data release from the ambitious DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys sets the stage for a ground-breaking 5-year survey with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which aims to provide new insights into the nature of dark energy. The map was released today at the January 2021 meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Astronomers have observed a luminous quasar 13.03 billion light-years from Earth the most distant quasar discovered to date.
Dating back to 670 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 5% its current age, the quasar hosts a supermassive black hole equivalent to the combined mass of 1.6 billion suns.
In addition to being the most distant and by extension, earliest quasar known, the object is the first of its kind to show evidence of an outflowing wind of super-heated gas escaping from the surroundings of the black hole at a fifth of the speed of light.
In addition to revealing a strong quasar-driven wind, the new observations also show intense star formation activity in the host galaxy where the quasar, formally designated J0313-1806, is located.
Loading video.
VIDEO: CosmoView Episode 20 for press release noirlab2015: Mapping Our Sun s Backyard
Music: zero-project - The Lower Dungeons (zero-project.gr) view more
Credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld, International Gemini Observatory/Jacqueline Faherty (American Museum of Natural History)/OpenSpace/Lynette Cook
Astronomers have curated the most complete list of nearby brown dwarfs to date thanks to discoveries made by thousands of volunteers participating in the Backyard Worlds citizen science project. The list and 3D map of 525 brown dwarfs including 38 reported for the first time incorporate observations from a host of astronomical instruments including several NOIRLab facilities. The results confirm that the Sun s neighborhood appears surprisingly diverse relative to other parts of the Milky Way Galaxy.
IMAGE:
Elliptical galaxies are generally characterized by their relatively smooth appearance when compared with spiral galaxies (one of which is to the left) which have more flocculent structure interwoven with dust. view more
Credit: DES/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/DOE/AURA
Acknowledgments: Image processing: DES, Jen Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF s NOIRLab), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin
The Dark Energy Survey has released a massive, public collection of astronomical data and calibrated images from six years of work. Containing data on nearly 700 million astronomical objects, this second data release in the Survey s seven-year history is the topic of sessions today and tomorrow at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.[1]