No Theme Thursday – Super Facts

Quasar TON 618

This is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Image by Kevin from The Beginning at Last

Kevin’s artistic picture above reminds me of a Quasar, a supermassive black hole emitting enormous amounts of energy.

What is a Quasar ?

A Quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is emitting enormous amounts of energy. The quasar is the supermassive black hole plus its accretion disk, the gas it is feeding on and the radiation it emits. The quasar is actively feeding on gas and stars and emitting enormous amounts of radiation in the process. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, and millions of times greater than the largest and most luminous stars in the known universe.

Supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. Singularity in space devouring matter and light. From Shutterstock Asset id: 2484018599 by Nazarii Neshcherenskyi.

TON 618

TON 618 is a hyper luminous Quasar known to house one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with an estimated mass of around 40 to 60 billion solar masses. Its luminosity is estimated to be 140 trillion times that of the Sun. The diameter of TON 618 is 780 billion kilometers or 82.6 light-years. Keep in mind that the distance to the moon is 1.3 light seconds and 82.6 light years is more than two billion times larger than that. Our sun is gigantic with a diameter 109 times larger than the diameter of earth. 1.3 million earths could fit inside the volume of our sun. However, in comparison to TON 618, our sun is a lot less than tiny. The diameter of TON 618 is 561 million times larger than that of the sun’s diameter and 177 octillion (an octillion is 27 zeros) suns could fit inside the volume of TON 618. In other words, we are comparing a dust particle to planet earth size wise. I am pretty sure you are not going to be able to imagine this.

Quasar in deep space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Asset id: 1758938918. by NASA images.

When TON 618 was discovered in 1957, quasars and supermassive black holes were not yet recognized and understood by astronomers. The word quasar inspired shock and awe in every nerd on the planet. The concept of quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, wasn’t fully recognized until 1963. When I was a kid in the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation as to what these gigantic ultra bright but far away objects could be. TON 618 is located 18.2 billion light years away. Considering that the reachable limit of the Universe is 16.5 billion light years even if you travel at the speed of light, you could never travel to TON 618 (barring the warp drive in Star Trek).

The Event Horizon

When we are talking about the diameter of a black hole we are not talking about a sphere with a solid surface. The black hole is a sphere, or an oval, wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. It’s truly black. As you approach the event horizon you become invisible, space deforms, and from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in, well in some sense. You’ll be transported beyond our universe and time as we know it. We can guess but we can’t really know.

Black Holes

Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see them if they are consuming matter. The matter close to black holes will heat up and glow. The closer to the event horizon the redder it is. It is called an accretion disk as in the depiction above. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

3D illustration of giant Black hole in deep space. High quality digital space art in 5K – realistic visualization. Stock Illustration ID: 2476711459 by Vadim Sadovski.

Black Hole Animation

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see. The video is about 4 minutes long.

TON 618 Animation

Below is an animation of TON 618, a quasar and the largest black hole known in the universe. This video is about 5 minutes.

To see my The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes Super Fact Click Here

To see the Super Facts click here

Note : Today March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, which mathematically describes black holes. It is also Pi Day (first 10 digits 3.1415926535), and there’s a rare moon eclipse tonight called a blood moon or a worm moon. Also, Dallas is under a fire warning. Be careful.

Important Note : I am going on a ski vacation tomorrow and I will take a one-week break from blogging as well as a break from reading other people’s blogs.

The Great Sun and Moon Spectacle

We are all in our places with sunshiny faces ready to experience the astronomical event of the century, a spectacle that Mr. Sun, Sun, Golden Mr. Sun and the moon provided for us.

This is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

For us in Dallas, Texas, 2024 was the year when the sun and the moon put up an unforgettable spectacle for all of us to see. On April 8, 2024, the sun and the moon and earth lined up perfectly so that the moon fully covered the sun. We had a total solar eclipse, and we were lucky with the weather. I can add that experiencing a total solar eclipse is quite different from experiencing a partial or annular solar eclipse. I’ve experienced a partial solar eclipse as well and I can attest to the difference.

Unlike a partial eclipse, it gets dark during a total solar eclipse, the stars come out if the sky is clear like it was. The birds and the insects become quiet. It happens very suddenly, in just a few seconds. The total solar eclipse lasted four minutes.

The Motion of the Sun and the Moon

To understand what a solar eclipse is, the video below might help. What you see is the moon and the earth as seen from the sun’s viewpoint. We see earth all lit up by the sun, like a full moon, and we also see the moon lit up by the sun.

In this situation, when the people on earth look up in the sky, they see the sun, but they don’t see the moon, even though it is there. It is a new moon, or a black moon if it happens twice in the same month. As the moon begins to partially cover the sun the shadows on the ground start looking different and if you use solar eclipse glasses you can see the sun disappearing and looking like a bright crescent, but it is still daylight and looking at the sun without eclipse glasses would just hurt your eyes.

Well, this is true until the sun is fully covered by the moon. When that happens, the light turns off and at that point it is safe to look at the sun without glasses. What you’ll see is a pitch-black circle in the sky surrounded by wispy faint lights. Those wispy faint lights are the sun’s corona.

Below is a youTube video showing an animation composed of actual satellite photos by NASA.

Solar Eclipse Preparation

I drank a very special beer for the occasion, a Trappist Belgian Strong Ale, or Quadruple, called Westvleteren 12 from Brouwerij Westvleteren (Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren).

Our patio table. The little brown packages contain AAS / ISO certified solar eclipse glasses.

Our daughter holding a Westvleteren 12 glass with a bow. Grandpa and grandma in the background.

Rollo our mini-Australian Shepherd on the patio.

The Partial Eclipse Phase

It was partially cloudy during the partial eclipse, but we were able to get a good look at the eclipse as it progressed. As mentioned, to see the partial eclipse, you have to use good solar eclipse glasses. It is primarily for safety reasons, but it is also pointless to look at the sun during a partial eclipse. You won’t see the eclipse crescent because the powerful light from the sun overwhelms your view.

I had a little filter that was placed in front of my phone camera as I took a few pictures. Admittedly they were pretty bad. I have an old Samsung Galaxy S8+ but even using newer phones it is difficult to get decent photos of something like this.

Partial eclipse photo taken with my old Samsung Galaxy phone and a filter.

The Total Eclipse

At 1:40PM Dallas time the total solar eclipse happened and luckily it was not covered by clouds. At this point it suddenly got dark and it was safe to look straight at the sun without using the eclipse glasses. The total eclipse lasted four minutes. I have included a shutter stock photo below which closely represents what we actually saw. We saw a black circle and around the black circle was a wispy white fog like light. This was the sun’s corona and it shone with about the same power as the full moon. It kind of looked like a black hole.

Except for the black background this looks like what we saw with our eyes. The sky we had was dark, like twilight, but not black. Solar Eclipse Stock Photo ID: 2344355767 by aeonWAVE

The Stars and the Planet Venus

Total solar eclipse photo that my daughter took. Can you find Venus?

Total Eclipse Photos

These eight pictures were taken with cell phones by my daughter Rachel, Denise Mosier-Wanken, and Margaret Weiss Bloebaum.

Did you see the total solar eclipse?

To see the Super Facts click here

Black Holes Monsters in the Sky

“This”Black Holes Monsters in the Sky” is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Black holes, everyone has heard of them, no one understands them. They are inscrutable monsters in the sky. They are regions of spacetime wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. Some of them are small, only 15 kilometers across, and some have a diameter 27 billion times larger than that.

As you get close to a black hole your time will run slower. You won’t notice it, but others will see you move in slow motion. If you return from your close encounter an hour on your clock might correspond to years elsewhere. As you approach the event horizon, the boundary of no escape, you become invisible and time will stop, at least from an outside view.

There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

I’ve looked up in the sky, and I’ve seen the spot where Sagittarius A-star is located. I’ve tried to look at it with my telescope, but I cannot see it. It is not possible to see it with a telescope, but it is there. The picture above may depict the view from a planet in the center of our galaxy. Three scientists received the Nobel prize in physics in 2020 for their research on black holes (Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez).

However, before them the tele evangelist Jack Van Impe won the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize in Astrophysics for his discovery that black holes meet all the technical requirements for Hell. The Ig Nobel prize is an alternative and less serious Nobel Prize. To find out more about Black Holes click here.

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see.