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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Looking for Black Holes

These celestial bodies have a "bad" reputation like a voracious monster that devoured everything around its, not even light can escape its gravitational pull is enormous. Objects that are named the black hole is a big mystery for astronomers and physicists. 

To unravel this mystery, a number of U.S. scientists to form a consortium with scientists from Denmark and Italy and created the most advanced nuclear spectroscopic telescope. This telescope is believed to open the "eyes" to astronomers because it produces the image of the sky in X-ray spectrum of high energy. 
Artist's concept of NuSTAR on orbit. NuSTAR has a 10-m (30') mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules (right) from the detectors in the focal plane (left). (Picture from: http://spacefellowship.com/)
Observatories that have had the size of a truck that will detect X-rays of various objects, such as the sun to black holes billions of light years away from our solar system. 

"The mission NuSTAR very unique because the telescope will be NASA's first mission to focus X-rays in the range of high-energy, creating the most detailed images ever taken in the electromagnetic spectrum," says Fiona Harrison, principal investigator for the mission at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena , California. 
NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission is seen here being lowered into its shipping container at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft is headed to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California, where it will be mated to its rocket. It is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. (Picture from: http://scienceblogs.com/)
Ahead of the launch of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR on March 21, 2012, preparations have been made since the end of January 2012. Nuclear spectroscopic telescope was shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to be matched with Pegasus, a rocket launcher that will carry into space. 

The telescope will be launched from an aircraft operating on the island of Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Island in the South Pacific. 

The observatory was shipped from Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Virginia, where the spacecraft and science instruments are integrated. Pegasus is also made in Orbital, but both were taken separately to Vendenberg. NuSTAR mission will be launched from L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft, which will take off from the Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific, which is located near the equator. Attached to the belly L-1011, NuSTAR and Pegasus will fly from Vandenberg to Kwajalein. They had arrived on March 7, 2012. 

On launch day, after the aircraft arrived at a predetermined location on the ocean, L-1011 will drop the Pegasus. At that time, the rocket will turn and bring NuSTAR into orbit above the Earth. 

"NuSTAR is an engineering achievement, a combination of mirrors and sophisticated X-ray detectors," says Yunjin Kim, project manager of the mission, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). (Picture from: KORAN TEMPO 3814)
NuSTAR telescope consists of two sets of concentric mirror layer 133 is formed of flexible glass-like what is found on the laptop screen. Given the X-rays requires a large focal distance (focal length), this telescope has a 10-meter pole structure that will be stretched out a week after launch. A variety of advanced technology installed on the telescope allows NuSTAR explore the world of cosmic X-rays of high energy resolution and sensitivity with a much more complete than previous missions, such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory. 

During the second year running its primary mission, NuSTAR will map the sky of the universe in X-rays, surveying the black hole, and map the supernova remnant. The telescope will also study the jet stream of particles that move away from the black hole, almost to the speed of light. NuSTAR will also investigate the sun, looking microflare which in theory is on the surface of the star. Micro-sized solar storm that is believed to explain how the sun's atmosphere or corona where temperatures reach millions of degrees Celsius it is heated. 

The telescope will also test the theory of dark matter, a mysterious substance which controls a quarter of the universe. To investigate the dark matter, NuSTAR will observe the sun and look for evidence of dark matter particles. 

"Thanks to NuSTAR, astronomers can discover and learn more of the most exotic objects in the universe, from the carcass of a star that has exploded in the Milky Way to the massive black hole located in the heart of a very distant galaxy," said Lou Kaluzienski, program scientist at NASA NuSTAR Washington.

NuSTAR is a small exploration missions managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at. Spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. Instrument made by a large consortium, including Caltech, JPL, Columbia University in New York, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Danish Technical University in Denmark, University of California at Berkeley, and ATK-Goleta. NuSTAR will be operated by a team at the University of California with the Italian Space Agency which lends equator of the earth station in Malindi, Kenya. *** [CANDRA DEWI | NASA | NUSTAR | KORAN TEMPO 3814]

Emerged from the Discussion of Physics
Successfully revealed the mysteries of the sky in the last few hundred years, such as the existence of other galaxies and solar system to the new planets and asteroids. But there is one thing that the sky is still a mystery, the black hole. These objects are the subject of serious discussion of the great scientists in the last century.
Supernova 1987A, as seen in X-rays by the Chandra Telescope. This will be one target of a new black hole-hunting telescope. (Picture from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/)
The idea of ​​a black hole was first coined by researchers in mathematics and physics, Pierre Simon Laplace, in the 18th century. He predicted the existence of celestial objects with gravity so strong that nothing can escape the pull, even though the light. 

Great physicist, Albert Einstein, open a new discussion when he published two theories, namely special relativity and general relativity in two centuries later. This theory explains the two points discussed Laplace, the particles of light and gravity. 

In 1916, German astrophysicist, Karl Schwarzchild, create a formula to calculate the minimum radius for an object is changed into a black hole. In the formula, known to the greater mass of celestial bodies, the greater the minimum radius requirements. As an example of the sun. This star will turn into a black hole if the compressed size of up to 3 kilometers. 

"The space within the radius is then known as a singularity, time disappears, and the nearly infinite space," said the professor of physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hobokens, New Jersey, Jeremy Bernstein, told Scientific American. 

Discussion continued by physicist Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the United States project of nuclear bombs. The calculations presented in 1939 showed that the object is incompressible can be produced when stars run out of fuel. All parts of the star then collapses into a point singularity. In the next development in mind that only the larger mass stars than eight times the mass of the sun that can turn into a black hole. 

The term black hole was introduced by astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler, of Princeton University in 1967. So named because this thing to swallow everything, including light, so it becomes invisible objects. Its small size and this makes the invisible black hole is difficult to detect. 

Detection of black holes has been done in an indirect way to track the light star. Seeing a black hole directly proposed by the physicist Stephen Hawking. He explained that the play of light near a black hole has radius chances are interested in or released into the air. Regardless of light can be seen with a telescope. 

Another way is to look at particle pulled by a black hole. Attraction of these particles produces energy that escapes in the form of light. Project Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) will utilize light as a beacon clues to the location of the black hole. *** [ANTON WILLIAM | KORAN TEMPO 3814]
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