Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a black hole toward the center of it called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*.  This black hole is apparently hungry, as it is going to consume a ton of gas in the next couple years.

Using the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in the European Southern Observatory, astronomers can see a cloud of gas that is roughly three times the size of Earth accelerating toward the black hole.  This means the gravitational pull of the black hole has latched onto the cloud and has begun drawing it, process that will get faster and faster the closer the gas gets to the black hole.

The collision of these two massive celestial bodies will be very interesting to witness, as scientists don’t know what exactly will happen.  The immense gravitational pull from the black hole will heat the gas in the cloud by several million degrees, at which point it will begin to emit X-Rays. After that, it may be ripped in two, with one part of the cloud launched out into space while another part settles around the black hole, but no one is sure yet if this is going to be the case.

You won’t be able to view this on a regular telescope, as it’s far too distant, but you can see similar objects with a small refractor or reflector telescope.  The rings of Saturn were viewed hundreds of years ago by Galileo, who thought there were ears on the planet, so you shouldn’t struggle to see them with the advanced astronomy optics we have available to us today.

The gas that settles around the black hole may form an accretion disk, which is very similar to Saturn’s rings.  Accretion discs are usually around stars, but they also form around black holes.  As planets revolve around stars and moons revolve around planets, an accretion disk is a huge bulk of mass that has not formed into a solid chunk that floats around a star or black hole.  This mass swirls around the black hole, which many artists represent similar to water going down a drain.

Get a look at Saturn’s Rings by taking out your refractor telescope, setting it up on your tripod and enjoying a bit of Astronomy.  There’s so much to see, and the smartest guys on the planet spend a lot of time guessing wrong about what’s going to happen in the myriad of events taking place all the time in the Universe! You may not be watching black holes consume gas, but the laws of physics cause these types of events to happen in a number of different ways, so you can still learn a lot.

One such occurrence has just taken place.  An object that astronomers are calling LkCa 15 b has just been photographed for the first time, and it appears to be a “protoplanet” which is a newly forming planet that is still extremely hot and has massive amounts of gas and dust floating around it in a wide ring.  The gas and dust is still being pulled into the planet, which will cool over time as more mass is added.

LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, and by a pretty wide margin, as it is roughly 5 times younger than the previous record holder.  The planet is forming into a gas giant similar to Jupiter, and because of its age astronomers are able to use telescopes to measure both the inner core of the planet and the surrounding gas in a way that has never been possible in the past.

Astronomers Adam Kraus and Michael Ireland discovered the planet using Hawaii’s Keck telescope array.  These 10-meter telescopes have incredible power, but it was actually optical sleight of hand that allowed the scientists to get a quality image of the protoplanet.  The Keck telescopes have a deformable mirror that allows for rapid corrections in the event of atmospheric distortions.  The telescopic sleight of hand used is called aperture mask interferometry, which involves placing a mask with holes in the path of the collected light in order to manipulate light waves.

As I’m sure you’ve all read our Telescopes FAQ, you’ll know that the aperture is one of the most important parts of a telescope.  It is the size of the main optical lens, and it is primarily this size that determines the amount of light gathered, which in turn determines how bright and clear the image is.  By manipulating the light through the Keck telescopes, Kraus and Ireland were able to remove light sources that would distort the image of LkCa 15 b to get a clear image of the planet during its formation.

Though interferometry has been around since the 1800s, it has only been able to view nearby stars for about the last 7 years, and by using the technique with the biggest telescopes on the planet far greater detail has been possible, leading to numerous discoveries, including this young planet.

Similar techniques to interferometry are used by amateur astronomers all the time.  Some telescope accessories, such as the Celestron Telescope Moon Filter, alter certain light frequencies to allow for a better view.  The Moon Filter dims the bright light from the moon to provide greater contrast, giving astronomers greater detail.

Research into this new planet may lead to greater understanding of how planets come into being.  While it is too early to tell, the area around LkCa 15 b may turn into a new solar system, with multiple planets forming from the massive amount of gas and dust in the area.  It appears at present to all be pulling toward the same spot for a single gas giant, but if enough dust collects far enough away from LkCa 15 b a second planet or even third planet may form.  It’s also possible at present that other celestial bodies may become moons for LkCa 15 b.  More study is planned over the coming years to train massive telescopes around the world on the new planet to see what happens in this baby solar system.

Neutron stars are interesting but especially difficult to properly view.  They are formed after a supernova of stars of a certain size.  These exploding stars are larger than the sun, but not so big as to form a black hole.  The massive amount of energy dispelled by a supernova blasts an unbelievable amount of mass around the galaxy, which is called a nebula.  Gravity causes this energy to slowly reform into a neutron star.  The all the gas of the nebula, which is certainly beautiful, conceals most of the neutron star, which is why a conventional telescope has difficulty seeing many of the finer details.

Neutron stars and nebulas start out spinning extremely rapidly, generates a massive magnetic field in a wide arc.  The magnetic field accelerates charged particles, which then emit light in pulses.  These light pulses are in multiple parts of the light spectrum, from visible light through gamma radiation, and it’s these gamma radiated particles that astronomers are looking at to better understand neutron stars and supernovas.

Have I lost anyone yet?  It’s complex stuff, but essentially a star explodes, and all the energy causes radiation to spin around the cosmos, some of which hits earth’s atmosphere and can be seen using specialized telescopes.

The Crab Nebula is the focus of this new study.  About 1000 years ago a star went supernova, leaving behind the Crab Nebula.  Energized particles from the nebula hit earth’s atmosphere moving faster than the speed of light. Upon their collision with earth these particles rapidly slow down, giving off a form of light called Cherenkov radiation.

To look at this radiation a telescope called VERITAS, which consists of four 12m telescopes, is focused on earth’s atmosphere, and is able to measure the amount of light from these tiny radiated particles to provide information about their direction and amount of energy, which can be reconstructed to show their origin.

But why does all this matter?  Well, the preliminary findings show that some of our previous observations and conclusions about neutron stars may be incorrect.  One of these possibly incorrect conclusions is about the exponential decay in pulse energy.  The energy from the Crab Nebula is not decaying as quickly as it should, based on prior findings.  It also starts out more powerful than previously thought possible.  This information gives us new clues as to how stars, galaxies, solar systems and planets are formed, so we may have a better understanding of how our own planet came to be.  Using these new findings astronomers may start looking at higher energy wavelengths when viewing nebulas to get a better idea of how they form.

There is a possibility that the Crab Nebula is an anomaly, so doing similar tests on other nebulas is necessary before any of this evidence can be considered conclusive.  This might prove difficult, as the Crab Nebula is one of the closest and youngest nebulas in the universe, and the readings from other nebulas may be less reliable.

It’s amazing to see how much work goes into determining the speed of celestial objects.  All this astrophysics really shows how much we can learn by using a telescope to look parts of the earth to see the smallest parts of some of the biggest objects in the universe.  It’s a bit over my head, but then I tend to think radar guns use some level of wizardry to find how fast a baseball moves.

If you want to take a look at nearby nebulae, I’d suggest investing in a dobsonian telescope with a large aperture.  The large aperture will collect enough light to allow you to see detail, and even color of some of the gorgeous nebula in our part of the universe.  The Orion Nebula is one of the easiest to see for newer astronomers.  The Meade 115mm ED TRIPLET APO f/7 Refractor Telescope is brand new to OpticsPlanet and features a 4.5” aperture, fully multi-coated lenses (for greater light transmission), and an 8X50 viewfinder for an excellent image when checking out a wide variety of celestial bodies, including nebulas.  Meade has decades of experience making top quality optics for amateur astronomers.  The high value of telescopes by Meade has made them particularly popular, but Meade Binoculars are also very successfully used by nighttime sky watchers throughout the world.