Category Astronomy/Space

Northwestern University and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) astrophysicists have discovered the tightest ultracool dwarf binary system ever observed.

The two stars are so close that it takes them less than one Earth day to revolve around each other. In other words, each star’s “year” lasts just 20.5 hours.

The newly discovered system, named LP 413-53AB, is composed of a pair of ultracool dwarfs, a class of very low-mass stars that are so cool that they emit their light primarily in the infrared, making them completely invisible to the human eye. They are nonetheless one of the most common types of stars in the universe.

Previously, astronomers had only detected three short-period ultracool dwarf bi...

Juno spacecraft discovered magnetospheric fireworks as magnetic field lines merge and snap between the gas giant and its largest moon. In June 2021, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew close to Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, observing evidence of magnetic reconnection...

While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) – an international observatory co-operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) – scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy. These super-hungry giants are the closest together that scientists have ever observed in multiple wavelengths. What’s more, the new research reveals that binary black holes and the galaxy mergers that create them may be surprisingly commonplace in the Universe...

A new analysis of distant galaxies imaged by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows that they are extremely young and share some rem...