Category Astronomy/Space

This cometary-type interplanetary dust particle was collected by a NASA stratospheric aircraft. Its porous aggregate structure is evident in this scanning electron microscope image. Credit: Hope Ishii/University of Hawaii

Chemical studies show that dust particles originated in a low-temperature environment. Experiments conducted at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) helped to confirm that samples of interplanetary particles – collected from Earth’s upper atmosphere and believed to originate from comets – contain dust leftover from the initial formation of the solar system.

An international team, led by Hope Ishii, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH Manoa), studied the particles’ chemical composition using infrared light at Ber...

This is an artist impression of nanoscale diamonds surrounding a young star in the Milky Way. Recent GBT and ATCA observations have identified the telltale radio signal of diamond dust around 3 such stars, suggesting they are a source of the so-called anomalous microwave emission. Credit: S. Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Nanoscale gemstones source of mysterious cosmic microwave light. Some of the tiniest diamonds in the universe – bits of crystalline carbon hundreds of thousands of times smaller than a grain of sand – have been detected swirling around 3 infant star systems in the Milky Way...

The massive pulsar in the binary system PSR J2215+5135, illustrated in the Figure, heats up the inner face of its companion star. Credit: Gabriel Pérez, SMM (IAC).

Using a pioneering method, researchers have found a neutron star of about 2.3 Solar masses – one of the most massive ever detected. Neutron stars (often called pulsars) are stellar remnants that have reached the end of their evolutionary life: they result from the death of a star of between 10 and 30 Solar masses. Despite their small size (about 20 km in diameter), neutron stars have more mass than the Sun, so they are extremely dense.

Researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) used an innovative method to measure the mass of one of the heaviest neutron...

This is an image of the R Aquarii nebula taken with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at the Observatory of Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) in La Palma. Colours indicate different ionization stages of the same chemical element, oxygen. Credit: R. Corradi – Daniel López

Scientists have published a detailed study of the evolution of the nebula surrounding the symbiotic star R Aquarii. The study employed observations from telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, and Chile taken over the course of more than two decades. In astronomical terms, at 600 light years away, the nebula around R Aquarii is rather close to us...