Category Astronomy/Space

Jets from Massive Protostars might be very different from Lower-Mass Systems

Artist’s conception of the young star Cep A HW2, showing a wide-angle wind originating close to the star and a disk of material orbiting the star (called an accretion disk), with a much narrower jet farther away.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

VLA reveals new details of protostellar jet. Astronomers studying the fast-moving jet of material ejected by a still-forming, massive young star found a major difference between that jet and those ejected by less-massive young stars. The scientists made the discovery by using the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the most detailed image yet of the inner region of such a jet coming from a massive young star.

Both low- and high-mass young stars, or protostars, propel jets outward perpendicular to ...

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What if the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way is actually a mass of Dark Matter?

Milky Way
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A team of researchers at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics has found evidence that suggests Sagittarius A* is not a massive black hole but is instead a mass of dark matter. In their paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, the group describes the evidence they found and how it has stood up to testing.

For several years the scientific community has agreed that there is a mass at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and that the mass is a supermassive black hole—it has been named Sagittarius A*. Its presence has never been verified directly, however, instead it has been inferred by noting the behavior of bodies around it...

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What if the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way is actually a mass of Dark Matter?

Milky Way
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A team of researchers at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics has found evidence that suggests Sagittarius A* is not a massive black hole but is instead a mass of dark matter. In their paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, the group describes the evidence they found and how it has stood up to testing.

For several years the scientific community has agreed that there is a mass at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and that the mass is a supermassive black hole—it has been named Sagittarius A*. Its presence has never been verified directly, however, instead it has been inferred by noting the behavior of bodies around it...

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Study reveals Diverse Magnetic Fields in Solar-type Star-Forming Cores

Core-scale magnetic fields (red segments) inferred using high-resolution and sensitive dust emission polarization observations using JCMT. The Solar-type star forming cores fragmented out of B213 filament are shown. (Image by Eswaraiah Chakali, et al. 2021) 

Magnetic fields are ubiquitous throughout the Milky Way galaxy and play a crucial role in all dynamics of interstellar medium. However, questions like how solar-type stars form out of magnetized molecular clouds, whether the role of magnetic fields changes at various scales and densities of molecular clouds, and what factors can change the morphology of magnetic fields in low-mass dense cores still remain unclear.

A new study led by Dr. Eswaraiah Chakali from Prof...

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