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Want to save all the calories from Mother's Day brunch? You can still "sweeten" her holiday with an opportunity to see the northern lights again tonight!

Just when we think we’ve seen the most powerful of flares from a colossal sunspot, the sun unleashed kicked off the strongest eruption of the weekend yet and is still crackling with solar storms.

Supermassive black holes are central to the dynamics and evolution of galaxies. They play a role in galactic formation, stellar production, and possibly even the clustering of dark matter. Almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole, which can make up a small fraction of a galaxy’s mass in nearby galaxies. While we know a great deal about these gravitational monsters, one question that has lingered is just how supermassive black holes gained mass so quickly.

Most of what we know about early black holes comes from quasars. These occur when supermassive black holes are in an extremely active phase, consuming prodigious amounts of matter and emitting intense light that can be seen across the Universe. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other observatories have observed quasars as far back as 13 billion years ago, meaning that they were already large and active just a few hundred million years after the big bang. But these brilliant beacons also pose an observational challenge. Early quasars are so bright they vastly outshine their host galaxy, making it difficult to observe the environments of early quasars. But a new study in The Astrophysical Journal has used a spectral trick to see these distant galactic hosts.

The team gathered JWST data on six distant quasars known to be about 13 billion light-years away. Since the quasars were observed at a range of wavelengths, the team then compared the light to model quasars and was able to categorize which wavelengths likely came from the compact source of the quasar, and which from the more diffuse galaxy surrounding it. By filtering out the quasar light, they obtained the first images of the distant galaxies that are home to these ancient quasars.

Since the brightness of each light source is related to its mass, the team could compare the mass of a quasar to the mass of its host galaxy. The result was surprising. In these early galaxies, the mass of the supermassive black hole is about 10% of that of the galaxy. This is much larger than the mass ratio seen in local galaxies, where supermassive black holes can comprise just a tenth of a percent of a galaxy’s mass. This likely means that early supermassive black holes grew extremely quickly, and could have even been the seeds of their galaxies. The observations go against the idea that early galaxies formed first and that their black holes formed later.

Astronomers still don’t know just how supermassive black holes formed so quickly in the early Universe, but it’s now clear that they did. In answering one question about the evolution of supermassive black holes, the team has raised several other questions.

Reference: Yue, Minghao, et al. “EIGER. V. Characterizing the Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars at z ? 6.” The Astrophysical Journal 966.2 (2024): 176.

The post Supermassive Black Holes Got Started From Massive Cosmic Seeds appeared first on Universe Today.

Relax and watch two black holes merge.

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Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun.

What do you do for an encore after you have virtually transported thousands of Houstonians to the International Space Station? If you are Felix & Paul, you invite them back, to fly to the moon.

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On Episode 110 of This Week In Space, Rod and Tariq talk with Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist, about the recent rescue of Voyager 1 from beyond the solar system.

Northrop Grumman Corporation has built its Manta Ray uncrewed underwater vehicle, which will operate long-duration missions and carry payloads into the ocean depths in partnership with DARPA.

Scientists engineer the 'purest ever silicon' to build reliable qubits that can be manufactured to the size of a pinhead on a chip and power million-qubit quantum computers in the future.

An aurora show like no other is playing out in the night sky this weekend, spawned by intense solar storms that are painting the sky spectacular hues of pinks, purples and greens.

Therapy chatbots are increasingly popular and may benefit some people, but it's dangerous to trust AI during a mental health crisis

NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope has spotted the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy erupting, proving even quiet black holes like Sagittarius A* need to vent sometimes.

Tonight and the rest of the weekend could be your best chance ever to see the aurora.

The Sun has been extremely active lately as it heads towards solar maximum. A giant Earth-facing sunspot group named AR3664 has been visible, and according to Spaceweather.com, the first of an unbelievable SIX coronal mass ejections were hurled our way from that active region, and is now hitting our planet’s magnetic field.

Solar experts predict that people in the US as far south as Alabama and Northern California could be treated to seeing the northern lights during this weekend. For those of you in northern Europe, you could also be in for some aurora excitement. Check the Space Weather Prediction Center’s 30-minute Aurora Forecast for the latest information.

If the weather conditions are right in your area, you might hit the aurora jackpot.  See a map with predictions, below.

A map from the Space Weather Prediction Center shows the aurora forecast for the U.S. on May 11, 2024. Credit: Space Weather Prediction Center

“If you happen to be in an area where it’s dark and cloud free and relatively unpolluted by light, you may get to see a fairly impressive aurora display, and that’s really the gift from space weather, is the aurora,” said Rob Steenburgh, from NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), during a briefing on Friday.

A map from the Space Weather Prediction Center shows the aurora forecast for the northern hemisphere on May 10, 2024. Credit: Space Weather Prediction Center

According to SWPC, the impact from the geomagnetic storm reached Earth-based magnetometers on May 10th at 1645 UT. More CMEs are following close behind and their arrival could extend the storm into the weekend.

While these solar storms could provide stunning views of auroras, there is also the potential for disruption to communications systems, power grids and satellite operations.

The Sun is super active right now! ?? ? ?

The video below shows a series of flares that erupted over the past seven days… not counting another X-class flare that happened this morning! pic.twitter.com/O5jwUBmMDT

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 10, 2024

As we reported earlier this week, the Sun released three X-class solar flares — the strongest class of flares — in short succession. Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release powerful bursts of energy and radiation coming from the magnetic energy associated with the sunspots. The more sunspots, the greater potential for flares.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flares — as seen in the bright flashes in the upper right — on May 5 and May 6, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO

The sunspot group AR3664 is so large, it is visible to the naked eye — but you MUST be wearing special eye-wear (got any of your eclipse glasses left from April 8?) or use special solar filters for telescopes or binoculars. AR3664 is enormous, about 10 times the size of Earth.

How to see the Northern Lights

The aurora is an incredible sight. Your best shot to see it is to be in a dark area.

“Get away from city lights into a dark, rural surrounding and look north,” said the National Weather Service in St. Louis, Missouri on X (Twitter). “Aside from some clouds associated with a passing front, much of the time looks mostly clear.”

Check the weather forecast in your region for cloud cover. But if you don’t have any luck tonight, check again Saturday or Sunday night. With multiple CMEs, the storm was expected to last through the weekend.

Good luck!

The post If You’ve Never Seen An Aurora Before, This Might Be Your Chance! appeared first on Universe Today.

Experts explain how certain worms can infect the brain and why they are an important global public health problem