Category Astronomy/Space

Various groupings of Jovian moons with the newly discovered ones shown in bold. The ‘oddball,’ called Valetudo after the Roman god Jupiter’s great-granddaughter, has a prograde orbit that crosses the retrograde orbits. Credit: By Roberto Molar-Candanosa, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science.

This brings Jupiter’s total number of known moons to a whopping 79 – the most of any planet in our solar system. Twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter have been found – 11 “normal” outer moons, and one that they’re calling an “oddball.” This brings Jupiter’s total number of known moons to a whopping 79 – the most of any planet in our Solar System.

A team led by Carnegie’s Scott S...

Astronomers find a Famous Exoplanet’s Doppelganger

When it comes to extrasolar planets, appearances can be deceiving. Astronomers have imaged a new planet, and it appears nearly identical to one of the best studied gas-giant planets. But this doppelganger differs in one very important way: its origin. “We have found a gas-giant planet that is a virtual twin of a previously known planet, but it looks like the two objects formed in different ways,” said Trent Dupuy, astronomer at the Gemini Observatory and leader of the study.

Emerging from stellar nurseries of gas and dust, stars are born like kittens in a litter, in bunches and inevitably wandering away from their birthplace...

Mauro Sereno et al. Gravitational lensing detection of an extremely dense environment around a galaxy cluster, Nature Astronomy (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0508-y

A study published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy and which questions current models of structure formation in the universe is based on data obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias and among its authors is a team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The structure of the universe can be compared to that of a sponge, often referred to as the cosmic web. Matter is concentrated along filaments which cross over each other, forming zones where most matter accumulates, and others where there is very little. At the densest points, galaxies group together, forming clusters...

This artist’s conception shows a blazar – the core of an active galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole. Scientists using the VERITAS array have detected gamma rays from the blazar TXS 0506+056, which is also thought to be a source of neutrinos. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

The VERITAS array has confirmed the detection of gamma rays from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. While these detections are relatively common for VERITAS, this black hole is potentially the first known astrophysical source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, a type of ghostly subatomic particle.

On September 22, 2017 the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic-kilometer neutrino telescope located at the South Pole, detected a high-energy neutrino of potential astrophysical origin...