more assorted science results from AAS
- Jimmy Irwin et al (UoM) has a Chandra x-ray source in an extragalactic globular - and they have Magellan spectra.
Surprise! No H lines.
There is O and N - WTF is N emission doing there?
Suggestion is that it is a white dwarf tidally disrupted by an intermediate mass black hole...
Maybe. That N emission is bothersome, shouldn't be there.
Press release at Chandra website. - Nidever et al have Green Bank Radio Telescope data showing the Magellanic stream is quite extended...
- Karl Gordon et al have a pretty infrared Spitzer picture of the Small Magellanic Cloud:
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Tom leads today, talking some more about Intermediate Mass Black Holes and possible evidence for black holes in globulars.
NGC 4472 in x-rays
ok, so there is probably a black hole in a globular in NGC 4472, and this, and the discovery paper
and very nice it is too
variable point x-ray source (…
The AAS is off to a good start:
Reines et al have found a good supermassive black hole candidate in Henize 2-10 - an irregular bulgeless dwarf galaxy about 10 Mpc away.
A dwarf irregular, with a diameter of only about 1 kpc, Henize 2 is in starburst. It contains a number of
massive, very young…
"Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once." -Henry David Thoreau
This past weekend, the Astronomy Picture of the Day was a remarkable shot of the giant spiral galaxy NGC 6872, taken by the Gemini Telescope. (It's not Hubble, but Gemini is…
There have been several interesting candidates for binary supermassive black holes found recently.
New data suggests one of the recently announced candidates is probably not a binary.
A recent press release from NOAO suggested that SDSS J153636.22+044127.0 might be a close binary supermassive…
What do you have against N?
we hates bloomin' N, we does
sctually a self-respecting white dwarf with an oxygen core ought not to have much any N, and it is hard to make in the process
makes me seriously doubt the WD tidal disruption scenario, that and some other things
been thinking about this object for much of 2009
It's not necessarily obvious to me that the lack of H emission requires no H. At high enough temperature it's all ionized. Needs some careful thought.
Maccarone's BH in a globular cluster, that Zepf et al. think is a stellar-mass BH accreting from a WD, is remarkably similar to Irwin's object. Hmm.
As one of the co-conspirators of Maccarone's BH I'd have to disagree on it being "remarkably similar" to Jimmy's source. The OIII line in the NGC 4472 BH is a few thousand km/s wide as opposed to 70 km/s in Jimmy's source. There are many other classes of objects that come into the picture at 70 km/s. Also the 4472 source shows OIII and only OIII (so far). No N.
There is of course the small matter that the 4472 source showed short term variability in a L>NS_Edd object insinuating a BH, while the latter has so far not done so. Still a possibility that the NGC 1399 candidate is a superposition of multiple bright X-ray sources.
Hmm. Well, Arunav, I'll keep reading all the papers on 'em--you've got me hooked. These objects are fascinating, and clearly not well enough studied; I think TACs would find it difficult to deny more time to study them.
Craig, erudite scholars such as yourself with discerning, refined tastes should clearly be on every applicable TAC ...