11
Oct 11

The First Detection of Abundant Carbon in the Early Universe

Source: Subaru Telescope

A research team of astronomers, mainly from Ehime University and Kyoto University in Japan, has successfully detected a carbon emission line (CIVλ1549) in the most distant radio galaxy known so far in the early universe. Using the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) on the Subaru Telescope, the team observed the radio galaxy TN J0924-2201, which is 12.5 billion light years away, and was able to measure its chemical composition for the first time. Their investigation of the detected carbon line showed that a significant amount of carbon existed as early as 12.5 billion years ago, less than a billion years after the Big Bang. This important finding contributes to our understanding of the chemical evolution of the universe and may provide clues about the chemical nature of humans, who are composed of various elements such as carbon and oxygen.(read more)

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9
Mar 11

The Most Distant Mature Galaxy Cluster — Young, but surprisingly grown-up

Source: ESO Science Release eso1108

The most remote mature cluster of galaxies yet found.
Credit: ESO/NOAJ/Subaru/R. Gobat

Astronomers have used an armada of telescopes on the ground and in space, including the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile to discover and measure the distance to the most remote mature cluster of galaxies yet found. Although this cluster is seen when the Universe was less than one quarter of its current age it looks surprisingly similar to galaxy clusters in the current Universe. (read more)

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4
Dec 09

First image of cool extrasolar planet candidate around Sun-like star

Source: Max-Planck Institute

Extrasolar planet list keeps on growing. Another planet outside of our Solar System has been directly imaged using the Subaru telescope. Given that the first visible light image of an extrasolar planet was taken a little more than a year ago, the list is growing pretty fast since now we are over ten.

GJ758B-Subaru-2009

Discovery image of GJ 758 B, taken in August
2009 with Subaru HiCIAO in the near infrared.

Credit: MPIA/NAOJ

The newest one, planet GJ 758 B is also the coolest directly imaged planet, with a temperature of 600 Kelvin, and it orbits a star that is much like our own Sun. GJ 758 B has a mass of between 10-40 times that of Jupiter, making it either a really big planet or a small brown dwarf.

Other links:
Astrophysical Journal Letters (arXiv.org)
Universe Today

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