Category Astronomy/Space

Work gives clues about how powerful jets are driven. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced a new image showing details of the magnetic fields in the region closest to the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy M87. The new work is providing astronomers with important clues about how powerful jets of material can be produced in that region.

A worldwide team of astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope, a collection of eight telescopes, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, measured a signature of magnetic fields — called polarization — around the black...

Located around 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), Abell 78 is an unusual type of planetary nebula.

After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to eight times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As this process occurs, the dying star will throw off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and planetary nebulae are a popular focus for astrophotographers because of their often beautiful and complex shapes. However, a few like Abell 78 are the result of a so-called “born again” star.

Although the core of the star has stopp...

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have been shedding light on the enigmatic “spiders from Mars,” providing the first physical evidence that these unique features on the planet’s surface can be formed by the sublimation of CO2 ice.

Spiders, more formally referred to as araneiforms, are strange-looking negative topography radial systems of dendritic troughs; patterns that resemble branches of a tree or fork lightning...

Radio observations of a cold, dense cloud of molecular ga...