Something mysteriously appears, something disappears under inexplicable circumstances

We present a series of unusual, amazing and mysterious space observations made by astronomers in recent months. Scientists try to find known explanations for almost every case. On the other hand, each of the discoveries can change science...

The mysterious disappearance of the black hole's crown

For the first time, astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other centers noticed that the corona was about huge black hole, the ultralight ring of high-energy particles surrounding the black hole's event horizon suddenly collapsed (1). The reason for this dramatic transformation is unclear, although scientists suspect that the source of the catastrophe could be a star trapped by the black hole's gravitational pull. Star it could bounce off a disk of spinning matter, causing everything around it, including corona particles, to suddenly fall into the black hole. As a result, as astronomers noticed, in just one year there was a sharp and unexpected drop in the brightness of the object by a factor of 10.

Black hole too big for the Milky Way

seventy times the mass of the sun. Discovered by researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC), an object dubbed LB-1 destroys current theories. According to most modern models of stellar evolution, black holes of this mass should not exist in a galaxy like ours. Until now, we thought that very massive stars with a chemical composition typical of the Milky Way should shed most of the gas as they approach the end of their lives. Therefore, you can not leave such massive objects. Now theorists have to take up the explanation of the mechanism of formation of the so-called.

strange circles

Astronomers have discovered four faintly luminous objects in the form of rings that fall into the ranges radio waves they are almost perfectly round and lighter at the edges. They are unlike any class of astronomical objects that have ever been observed. The objects have been named ORCs (strange radio circles) because of their shape and general features.

Astronomers don't yet know exactly how far away these objects are, but they think they could be associated with distant galaxies. All these objects have a diameter of approximately one arc minute (for comparison, 31 arc minutes). Astronomers speculate that these objects may be shock waves left over from some extragalactic event or possible radio galaxy activity.

Mysterious "eruption" of the XIX century

In the southern region Milky Way (see also: ) there is a vast, oddly shaped nebula, intersected here and there by dark streaks that are known to be dust clouds suspended between us and the nebula. At its center is This keel (2), a binary star in the constellation Kila, is one of the largest, most massive, and brightest stars in our Galaxy.

2. Nebula around Eta Carina

The main component of this system is a giant (100-150 times more massive than the Sun) bright blue variable star. This star is very unstable and can explode at any moment as a supernova or even a hypernova (a type of supernova capable of emitting a gamma-ray burst). It lies within a large, bright nebula known as Kiel Nebula (Keyhole or NGC 3372). The second component of the system is a massive star spectral class O Or wolf-rayet starand the period of circulation of the system is 5,54 years.

February 1, 1827, according to a note by a naturalist. William Burchell, This has reached its first magnitude. It then returned to the second and remained so for ten years, until the end of 1837, when the most exciting phase began, sometimes called the "Great Eruption". Only at the beginning of 1838 glow eta keel it surpassed the brightness of most stars. Then he began to decrease his brightness again, then increase it.

At 1843 estimated time of arrival he reached his maximum second brightest star in the sky after Sirius. The "eruption" lasted an incredibly long time. Then its brightness began to dim again, dropping to about magnitude 1900 in 1940-8, so that it was no longer visible to the naked eye. However, it soon cleared up again to 6-7. in 1952. Currently, the star is on the border of naked eye visibility at a magnitude of 6,21 m, fixing a doubling of brightness in 1998-1999.

It is believed that Eta Carinae is at an extreme stage of evolution and can explode within tens of thousands of years and even turn into a black hole. However, her current behavior is essentially a mystery. There is no theoretical model that could fully explain its instability.

Mysterious changes in the Martian atmosphere

The lab has found that methane levels in the Martian atmosphere are mysteriously changing. And last year we received another sensational news from a well-deserved robot, this time about a change in the level of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. The results of these studies have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. So far, scientists have no clear explanation why this is so. Like fluctuations in methane levels, fluctuations in oxygen levels are likely related to geological processes, but can also be sign of activity of life forms.

Star to star

A telescope in Chile recently discovered an interesting object nearby Small Magellanic Cloud. Marked it - HV 2112. This is a rather unattractive name for what was probably the first and so far the only representative of a new type of stellar object. Until now, they were considered completely hypothetical. They are big and red. The enormous pressure and temperature of these stellar bodies means that they can support the triple a process, in which three 4He helium nuclei (alpha particles) form one 12C carbon nucleus. Thus, carbon becomes the building material of all living organisms. Examination of the light spectrum of HV 2112 revealed a much larger amount of heavy elements, including rubidium, lithium and molybdenum.

It was the object's signature Thorn-Zhitkov (TŻO), a type of star consisting of a red giant or supergiant with a neutron star inside it (3). This order has been proposed Kip Thorne (see also: ) and Anna Zhitkova in 1976.

3. A neutron star inside a red giant

There are three possible scenarios for the emergence of TJO. The first predicts the formation of two stars in a dense globular cluster as a result of a collision of two stars, the second predicts a supernova explosion, which is never exactly symmetrical and the resulting neutron star may begin to move along a trajectory different from its own. original orbit around the second component of the system, then, depending on the direction of its movement, the neutron star can fall out of the system, or be “swallowed” by its satellite if it starts moving towards it. There is also a possible scenario in which a neutron star is absorbed by a second star, turning into a red giant.

Tsunamis destroying galaxies

New data from Hubble Space Telescope NASA announces the possibility of creating in the galaxies the most powerful phenomenon in the universe, known as the "quasar tsunami". This is a cosmic storm of such terrifying proportions that it could destroy an entire galaxy. "No other phenomenon can transfer more mechanical energy," said Nahum Arav of Virginia Tech in a post investigating the phenomenon. Arav and his colleagues described these devastating phenomena in a series of six papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements.