{"id":15385,"date":"2016-07-07T22:24:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T14:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/japans-hitomi-observatory-made-cosmic-discovery-before-failing\/"},"modified":"2016-07-07T22:24:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T14:24:58","slug":"japans-hitomi-observatory-made-cosmic-discovery-before-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/japans-hitomi-observatory-made-cosmic-discovery-before-failing\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s Hitomi observatory made cosmic discovery before failing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Perseus galaxy cluster is filled with hot X-ray-emitting gas, as seen in this image from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers using the Soft X-ray Spectrometer aboard the Hitomi satellite have, for the first time, mapped the motion of this gas and determined its velocity structure across a large part of the cluster. The square overlay, which spans about 195,000 light-years at the cluster\u2019s distance, shows the area observed by Hitomi. Colors correspond to the detected gas speeds, with bluer colors indicating faster motion toward Earth and redder colors showing greater velocities in the opposite direction.
Credits: NASA Goddard and NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/E. Bulbul, et al.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Japan\u2019s doomed Hitomi observatory peeled back a veil on the inner workings of the Perseus cluster of galaxies before the satellite spun out of control earlier this year, revealing in unprecedented detail how gas heated to millions of degrees behaves around an unseen supermassive black hole, scientists said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Hitomi satellite gathered the observations for the discovery in just two-and-a-half days, before it succumbed to a chain of errors that led to the loss off the mission March 26.<\/p>\n

The results published in the July 7 edition of the journal Nature offer a tease of what the Hitomi observatory, billed by astronomers as the most important X-ray mission of the decade, could have discovered during its planned three-year mission led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.<\/p>\n

Within weeks after its Feb. 17 launch, Hitomi extended its optical bench and turned its X-ray sensors toward the Perseus cluster of galaxies, a section of the sky populated with thousands of galaxies and named for the constellation in which it appears.<\/p>\n

The observations of the Perseus group with Hitomi\u2019s Soft X-ray Spectrometer, an instrument developed at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center with contributions from scientists in Japan and the Netherlands, revealed a \u201cremarkably quiescent atmosphere\u201d around a supermassive black hole at the cluster\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

The quiet environment are the heart of the Perseus cluster \u2014 a vast structure 240 million light-years away \u2014 was a surprise to some scientists. A galaxy named NGC 1275 at the core of the cluster erupts in bubbles of gas into the space surrounding it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis cluster contains an active galaxy in its core, and there is clear evidence in previously obtained X-ray images that outflows from this \u2018central engine\u2019 have injected shocks and bubbles into the cluster core,\u201d said Andrew Szymkowiak, a Yale senior research scientist in astronomy and physics and a member of the Soft X-ray Spectrometer, or SXS, development team. \u201cThe surprising result from the spectra obtained with the SXS is that the bulk of the X-ray gas only shows evidence for very small amounts of turbulence from these outflow events.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA said the information collected by the SXS instrument yielded results 30 times better than previous X-ray spectral observations of the center of the Perseus cluster. The measurements show the spectral signatures of metals like iron, nickel, chromium and manganese dispersed through countless stellar explosions, or supernovas.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to measure gas motions is a major advance in understanding the dynamic behavior of galaxy clusters and its ties to cosmic evolution,\u201d said Irina Zhuravleva, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint institute of Stanford University and the Department of Energy\u2019s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.<\/p>\n

The hot gas in the Perseus cluster shines bright in X-ray wavelengths, but is unseen in visible light. The temperature of the gas averages around 90 million degrees Fahrenheit (50 million degrees Celsius), scientists said.<\/p>\n

\"This
This image created by physicists at Stanford\u2019s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory illustrates how supermassive black holes at the center of galaxy clusters could heat intergalactic gas, preventing it from cooling and forming stars. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFor the first time, we have mapped the motion of the X-ray-emitting gas in a cluster of galaxies and determined its velocity structure over a wide range of spatial scales,\u201d said Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for the Hitomi collaboration at the Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cAlthough this gas is continually stirred by fast outflows from the central black hole, its velocities are small on astronomical scales and show evidence for only minor levels of turbulence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SXS instrument aboard Hitomi was designed to study the composition and velocity of super-heated matter surround black holes. Astronomers expected the detector to send back unrivaled data about the complicated environment around the compact, collapsed skeletons of stars.<\/p>\n

The sensor measured gas velocities toward and away from Earth within a total range of about 365,000 miles an hour (590,000 kilometers per hour), a \u201csurprisingly modest\u201d speed on cosmic scales, NASA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The result indicates that turbulence from the black hole contributes a small fraction of the total gas pressure in the region of the Perseus cluster observed by Hitomi, allowing astronomers to refine their estimate of the cluster\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m surprised the hot gas is absorbing the power output of the black hole so quickly, so efficiently. The gas is relatively stable and isn\u2019t getting pushed around as much as we thought,\u201d said team member Brian McNamara, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. \u201cHitomi\u2019s Perseus observation tells us that we can probably weigh distant galaxy clusters to greater accuracy than we can weigh our own Milky Way galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Improved size and mass estimates for clusters of galaxies could help cosmologists better measure the growth and evolution of the most enormous structures in the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the Hitomi mission ended tragically after a very short period of time, it\u2019s fair to say that it has opened a new chapter in X-ray astronomy,\u201d said Zhuravleva, a co-author of the study published in Nature.<\/p>\n

The core of Hitomi\u2019s X-ray spectrometer was a \u201cmicrocalorimeter\u201d unlike any successfully flown before. The researchers in charge of the instrument tried to fly it on a mission that eventually became NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory, but officials kept the spectrometer off Chandra due to budget concerns.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Hitomi spacecraft is seen during a media held at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency\u2019s Tsukuba Space Center last year. Credit: JAXA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA partnered with Japan to launch the instrument on an X-ray observatory in 2000, but that mission was lost in a launch mishap. Japan\u2019s follow-up X-ray telescope launched with a replacement NASA-built spectrometer in 2005, but the sensor failed before collecting science data.<\/p>\n

The science team behind microcalorimeter technology now has to contend with another failure.<\/p>\n

Chandra is the workhorse for astronomers pursuing research in those areas. Europe\u2019s XMM-Newton space telescope is also an asset for X-ray astronomers. But both missions launched in 1999 and are functioning well beyond their designed lifetimes, and neither can resolve the composition and motion of hot gas as well as Hitomi.<\/p>\n

The NuSTAR X-ray telescope developed by NASA is also available, but its sensor is also not as capable as the instruments lost aboard Hitomi.<\/p>\n

Scientists may have to wait for the next large X-ray mission on the books. The European Space Agency-led Athena X-ray observatory is expected to launch in 2028, and it is the only project planned to fully follow up on Hitomi\u2019s promise.<\/p>\n

\u201cScientifically and technically, the Hitomi results are an exciting foretaste of Athena,\u201d said David Lumb, ESA\u2019s Athena study scientist, in a statement. \u201cThe demonstration of a radically new imaging spectrometer instrument concept gives huge confidence for future developments for Athena.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitomi\u2019s nearly $400 million mission abruptly ended March 26, when a series of attitude control failures caused the satellite to spin out of control, leading to its partial break-up in Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

The mission\u2019s overall cost included $55 million from NASA for development and construction of the Soft X-ray Spectrometer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data Hitomi sent back to Earth are just beautiful,\u201d said Norbert Werner, a research associate at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey demonstrate what\u2019s possible in the field and give us a taste of all the great science that should have come out of the mission over the years,\u201d Werner said.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Perseus galaxy cluster is filled with hot X-ray-emitting gas, as seen in this image from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers using the Soft X-ray Spectrometer aboard the Hitomi satellite have, for the first time, mapped the motion of this gas and determined its velocity structure across a large part of the cluster. The square […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3661,1690,1975,1663,377,877,3250],"class_list":["post-15385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astro-h","tag-astrophysics","tag-black-holes","tag-hitomi","tag-japan","tag-jaxa","tag-x-rays"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}