April 29, 2024

Challenging Past Assumptions: Light From Outside Our Galaxy Much Brighter Than Expected

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have actually conducted a study with brand-new measurements that show the light discharged by stars outside our galaxy is 2 to 3 times brighter than the light from recognized populations of galaxies. These findings challenge previous presumptions about the number and environment of stars in the universe. The results of the study have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are presently offered on ArXiv.

Previously this year, an independent group of scientists reported the COB was two times as large as originally believed in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Those results were no fluke, as corroborated utilizing a much broader set of LORRI observations in the new study by Symons, RIT Associate Professor Michael Zemcov, and scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University.
While an unobscured measurement of the COB is hard to achieve from the Earth due to dust between planets, the New Horizons spacecraft is at the edge of our solar system where this foreground is minimal and provides a much clearer view for this type of study. The researchers hope that future objectives and instruments can be developed to help explore the inconsistency.
” This has specified where its a real secret that requires to be resolved,” said Zemcov, a research study teacher at RITs Center for Detectors and School of Physics and Astronomy. “I hope that some of the experiments were associated with here at RIT consisting of CIBER-2 and SPHEREx can assist us solve the disparity.”
Reference: “A Measurement of the Cosmic Optical Background and Diffuse Galactic Light Scaling from the R < < 50 AU New Horizons-LORRI Data" by Teresa Symons, Michael Zemcov, Asantha Cooray, Carey Lisse, Andrew R. Poppe, 14 December 2022, ArXiv.DOI: 10.48550/ arXiv.2212.07449. New research study has actually discovered that the light released by stars outside our galaxy is significantly brighter than formerly believed. Researchers at RIT lead a study utilizing data collected by LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) on NASAs New Horizons mission. Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology have actually carried out a research study with brand-new measurements that show the light produced by stars outside our galaxy is 2 to 3 times brighter than the light from recognized populations of galaxies. These findings challenge previous assumptions about the number and environment of stars in the universe. The results of the study have actually been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are presently readily available on ArXiv. The research group analyzed numerous images of background light taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASAs New Horizons mission to calculate the cosmic optical background (COB)-- the amount of light released by stars beyond the Milky Way over the history of the universe. It suggests there may be missing out on sources of optical light in the universe if the COB brightness doesnt equivalent the light from galaxies we know about. " We see more light than we should see based upon the populations of galaxies that we understand to exist and just how much light we approximate they need to produce," said Teresa Symons 22 Ph.D. (astrophysical sciences and technology), who led the study for her dissertation and is now a postdoctoral scientist at the University of California Irvine. "Determining what is producing that light could change our fundamental understanding of how deep space formed in time."