Category Astronomy/Space

The planet’s night side likely hosts iron clouds, titanium rain, and winds that dwarf Earth’s jetstream. MIT astronomers have obtained the clearest view yet of the perpetual dark side of an exoplanet that is “tidally locked” to its star. Their observations, combined with measurements of the planet’s permanent day side, provide the first detailed view of an exoplanet’s global atmosphere.

“We’re now moving beyond taking isolated snapshots of specific regions of exoplanet atmospheres, to study them as the 3D systems they truly are,” says Thomas Mikal-Evans, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

The planet at the center of the new study, which appears...

By a stroke of luck, a team led by Dutch Ph.D. student Martijn Oei has discovered a radio galaxy of at least 16 million light-years long. The pair of plasma plumes is the largest structure made by a galaxy known thus far. The finding disproves some long-kept hypotheses about the growth of radio galaxies.

A supermassive black hole lurks in the center of many galaxies, which slows down the birth of new stars and therefore strongly influences the lifecycle of the galaxy as a...

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are extremely energetic sources powered by supermassive black holes and found at the centre of some galaxies. These black holes feed on large volumes of cosmic dust and gas. Before it is eaten up, this material spirals towards the black hole and huge amounts of energy are released in the process, often outshining all the stars in the galaxy.

Astronomers have been curio...

The asteroid 16 Psyche, which NASA intends to visit with a spacecraft in 2026, may be less heavy metal and more hard rock than scientists have surmised, according to a new study by researchers from Brown and Purdue universities.

Psyche, which orbits the sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is the largest of the M-type asteroids, which are composed chiefly of iron and nickel as opposed to the silicate rocks that make up most other asteroids. But when viewed from Earth, Psyche sends mixed signals about its composition.

The light it reflects tells scientists that the surface is indeed mostly metal...