THE BRIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE SKY

Today, no politics, no wars, no Trump.  All space science, for astronomers found what may be the Universe's brightest object in the sky, J0529-4351, and it's humongous.

• Out there 12 billion light-years away is a quasar with a black hole at its heart, growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a Sun a day.
• A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
• From your early science courses you must remember that the Sun is 92 million miles from us.
• A light year (which is a unit of length) is equivalent to doing 31,500 round trips to the sun.
• Thus, you would need to do that 12 billion times to get to J0529-4351.
• This quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun.  
• 
  That black hole powering that quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our Sun.  But there are bigger ones, for at the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 is a black hole equivalent to 30 billion Suns.
• This is the most violent place in our Universe.
• Age?  Began to form not long after the Big Bang.

So what is a quasar, you ask?  

• It is in a subclass of active galactic nuclei, where gas and dust falls into a supermassive black hole.
• Still confused?  Well, a quasar is just a gigantic black hole.
• Can you see a quasar?
• Lots of them.

• 
  The closest one, 3C 273 (to the right), is visible with an 8-inch telescope.  
• It shines at magnitude 12.9 in the constellation Virgo.  
• Is about 25 trillion times more luminous than our Sun.
• Take our entire Milky Way Galaxy.  Quasars can shine between 10 and 100,000 times brighter than our entire Milky Way.

• 
  And you must know that our Milky Way is average as galaxies go, but light would take from 100,000 to 200,000 years to travel from one end of our galaxy to the other.  You'd think astronomers would have known this way back in time, but I used that range because only recently have they determined that this diameter is double the size previously thought to be correct.  The largest galaxy is IC 1101 with a diameter perhaps of 550,000 light years.
• 
  The Hubble Space Telescope has recorded images of many.  These are mostly billions of light years away.
• These numbers are a lot more mind-boggling than the mere quadrillion I wrote about in the Huffington Post 15 years ago.

But what really is brightness?  I look up into the sky and our Sun is the brightest, at least to me.  The top ten can be found in this article.

But astronomers use absolute magnitude, defined as the apparent magnitude that an object would have if it were observed from a distance of 10 parsecs (1.9x10 to the fourteenth power miles).  This is the field of stellar astrophysics.  Observational astronomy, of stargazing from Earth, uses apparent magnitude, using illuminance such as lux.

Well, enough of that.  What about something more understandable?  What about catching a flight to follow a solar eclipse?

• The sky will darken over a band of the USA on 8April2024, beginning from Mexico, through Texas, up to Detroit, into upstate New York, passing through Maine into Canada.  This one will be twice as long as the 2017 eclipse, with a path nearly twice as wide.  The next time this awesome natural display will occur in the U.S. is in years 20 years.
• 
  Dallas:  partial eclipse begins at 12:23 PM CDT, totality begins 1:40, maximum 1:42, totality ends 1:44 and partial ends 3:02.
• Note that daylight savings time begins at 2AM on March 10.

• 
  Cleveland:  partial eclipse begins at 1:50 PM EDT and maximum 3:15 EDT.
• Caribou, Maine:  partial eclipse begins 2:22 PM EDT and maximum 3:33 EDT.
• Astro tourism is a new hot travel trend.

• 
  Delta has two special solar eclipse flights.
• Delta 1218, an Airbus A220-300, will leave with 130 passenger from Austin at just past noon and arrive in Detroit at 4:20PM ET.
• Delta 1010, an Airbus 321neo, will depart with 194 passengers from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport at 12:30PM CT, and arrive in Detroit at 4:20PM ET.

• 
  Delta says other flights will also have prime eclipse-viewing opportunities.

Those include flight 5699 from Detroit to New York’s Westchester leaving at 2:59 p.m local time on a ERJ-175, flight 924 from Los Angeles to Dallas Fort Worth departing at 8:40 a.m. on an A320, flight 2869 from Los Angeles to San Antonio taking off at 9 a.m. on an A319, flight 1001 from Salt Lake City to San Antonio leaving at 10:08 a.m. on a A220-300, and flight 1683 from Salt Lake City to Austin departing at 9:55 a.m on a A320.

• If you go, bring protective viewing glasses.

I did say no politics today, so sorry, but:

• Yesterday, Congressional leaders met with President Joe Biden, and seemed satisfied.  House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was optimistic.
• Today, the longest serving Senate leader of all  time, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he will step down from his position.  Who will replace him?

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