LARGEST STELLAR OBJECT EVER???!!!!
Two black holes with 28 BILLION SUNS of mass have been found by astronomers and might merge after nearly 3 BILLION YEARS!!! Plus, a gamma ray detector has been repurposed for studying radioactive decay emissions, and a 1.3 gigapixel photo of the Vela Supernova Remnant reveals KEY details about its evolution!!!
Previews to this week's articles:
#1: "Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers have measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never observed. This massive pair gives clues as to why such an event seems so unlikely in the Universe" (AURA).
#2: "[R]esearchers believed the Compton camera, which includes something called a Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) semiconductor imaging sensor, could be ideal for measuring the polarization of gamma rays from unstable nuclei [...] The scientists used accelerator experiments at the RIKEN research institute to perform a series of nuclear spectroscopy tests that involved blasting a film of iron nuclei with a beam of protons [...] This allowed for a detailed analysis of scattering events and the realization of a highly sensitive polarization measurement to test the capabilities of the Compton camera" (Robert Lea, Space.com).
#3: "[An image of the Vela Supernova Remant] was acquired by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4-Meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. It is one of the most powerful wide-field instruments ever built, and this image of the Vela supernova remnant is proof of its capabilities. It's in fact the largest image ever released by the camera at 1.3 gigapixel (1.3 billion pixels) in size" (Keith Cooper, Space.com).
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