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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Kepler Space Telescope’s first exoplanet candidate confirmed

    March 12, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s concept of a Kepler-1658-like system. Sound waves propagating through the stellar interior were used to characterize the star and the planet. Kepler-1658b, orbiting with a period of just 3.8 days, was the first exoplanet candidate discovered by Kepler nearly 10 years ago.

    Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

    An international team of astronomers, led by University of Hawaii graduate student Ashley Chontos, announced the confirmation of the first exoplanet candidate identified by NASA’s Kepler Mission. The result was presented at the fifth Kepler/K2 Science Conference held in Glendale, CA.

    Launched almost exactly 10 years ago, the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered thousands of exoplanets using the transit method – small dips in a star’s brightness...

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    Massive Twin Star discovered Snuggling Close to its Stellar Sibling

    March 11, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    2MASS observations (background image) revealed a highly reddened source back in 2003 indicating the massive young nature of PDS 27. PIONIER on VLTI provides 2,000 times higher angular resolution making it possible to resolve PDS 27 as a binary system for the first time in 2019.
    Credit: Evgenia Koumpia, University of Leeds

    Astronomers have discovered a binary star system with the closest high-mass young stellar objects ever measured, providing a valuable “laboratory” to test theories on high mass binary star formation.

    An international team led by the University of Leeds has determined the distance between the massive young star PDS 27 and its orbiting stellar companion to be just 30 astronomical units away or 4.5 billion km...

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    Stars Exploding as Supernovae lose their mass to companion stars during their lives

    March 10, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A massive star evolving and becoming a red supergiant, and finally exploding as a supernova. A binary companion may strip the star’s hydrogen away (producing supernova type IIb/Ib), and for a more massive star the stellar wind expels the remaining helium layer (producing supernova type Ic).
    Credit: Keiichi Maeda

    Stars over eight times more massive than the Sun end their lives in supernovae explosions. The composition of the star influences what happens during the explosion.

    A considerable number of massive stars have a close companion star. Led by researchers at Kyoto University, a team of international researchers observed that some stars exploding as supernovae may release part of their hydrogen layers to their companion stars before the explosion.

    “In a binary star system, the star ...

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    New Surprises from Jupiter and Saturn

    March 9, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Jupiter.
    Credit: Caltech

    Latest data on Jupiter and Saturn from Juno and Cassini missions challenge current theories of planetary formation. The latest data sent back by the Juno and Cassini spacecraft from giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn have challenged a lot of current theories about how planets in our solar system form and behave.

    The detailed magnetic and gravity data have been “invaluable but also confounding,” said David Stevenson from Caltech, who will present an update of both missions this week at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston.

    “Although there are puzzles yet to be explained, this is already clarifying some of our ideas about how planets form, how they make magnetic fields and how the winds blow,” Stevenson said.

    Cassini orbited Satur...

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