m15car9b

A long Chandra observation of Tycho carried out by Hughes, Eriksen, and colleagues has revealed a pattern of X-ray "stripes" never seen before in a supernova remnant. The stripes are seen in the high-energy X-rays (blue cutouts), while low-energy X-rays (red) show expanding debris from the supernova explosion. The stripes are areas where the magnetic fields are much more tangled and the particle motion is much more turbulent than surrounding areas. Electrons become trapped in these regions and emit X-rays as they spiral around the magnetic field lines. The spacing of the stripes may provide the first direct evidence that a cosmic event can accelerate particles to energies a hundred times higher than achieved by the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.)

cb58mom0

Four images from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) of cosmic background radiation, top row, with dark blue colors indicating "shadows" cast by galaxy clusters. Below, four optical images of the galaxy clusters, with white contour lines corresponding to the cosmic background radiation intensity levels in the ACT images. From a project by Hughes and Menanteau with Chilean professors Leopoldo Infante and Felipe Barrientos and undergraduate student Jorge Gonzalez, in collaboration with the entire ACT team. (Credit: top row: Tobias Marriage, Johns Hopkins / Princeton; bottom matrix: Felipe Menanteau, Rutgers)

cb58mom0

Integrated CO(3-2) intensity of the gravitationally lensed Lyman break galaxy MS1512-cB58, obtained with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. This z = 2.7 system is the first in its class to be detected in molecular gas. From a project of Baker.

cb58mom0

Hubble Space Telescope image of the gravitational lens SDSS 0924+0219. There are four images of a quasar at redshift z=1.5, created by the deflection of light around a foreground elliptical galaxy. The image at the far left is 12 times fainter than it "ought" to be, because it is perturbed by individual stars in the lens galaxy. From a project of Keeton.

NGC1365

Velocity field of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, obtained with the Rutgers Fabry-Perot and the 1.5-meter telescope of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. The colors represent velocities; due to the rotation of the galaxy, one side (shown in blue) is blueshifted relative to the center, while the other side is moving away, and redshifted (shown in red). From a project of Sanchez, Sellwood, and Williams.

m4 wd

Some of the longest exposures ever taken with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal faint white dwarfs in M4, the nearest globular cluster to earth. These stars are being used to constrain the age of the universe. From a project of Pryor.

m15car9b

Image of M33, a Local Group spiral galaxy, obtained with the CCD camera on the Serin 20-inch telescope. Courtesy of T. Williams.

NGC4123

Above is an image of the southern barred galaxy NGC 4123 taken in the I-band. On the right is a color-coded map of the H-alpha emission from this galaxy shown to the same scale; red indicates gas that is moving away relative to the systemic velocity (yellow) and blue indicates approaching gas. Weiner, Sellwood & Williams were able to estimate the mass in the disk of this galaxy by modeling the distortions to a simple axisymmetric flow pattern caused by the bar. They conclude that the disk is massive enough to account for all the central attraction in the inner part of this galaxy and that the dark matter halo must have a very low central density - a result which is inconsistent with predictions from the popular Cold Dark Matter model of galaxy formation.

m15car9b

Image of the center of the globular cluster M15, taken with Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, and the Rutgers Fabry-Perot etalon behind the Adaptive Optics Bonnette. The image is the average of four 15 minute exposures having a pass band of about 2 Angstroms centered near the 8542 A calcium triplet line. The profile of the point-spread function in the original images has a sharp core surrounded by a more diffuse halo. The sharp cores have FWHM's of 0.10-0.13 arcsec, comparable to images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. From a project of Pryor and Williams.

SALT picture

Rutgers is a 10% partner in the Southern Africa Large Telescope, which is nearing completion at SAAO. The SALT is set to begin operations in 2005.

SALT suth

A computer-generated image of SALT at Sutherland, the home of the SAAO.

 


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