Category Astronomy/Space

Artist’s concept depicting one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b.
Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Scientists have identified a group of planets outside our solar system where the same chemical conditions that may have led to life on Earth exist. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), found that the chances for life to develop on the surface of a rocky planet like Earth are connected to the type and strength of light given off by its host star.

Their study, published in the journal Science Advances, proposes that stars which give off sufficient ultraviolet (UV) light could kick-start life on their orbiting planets in the same way it likely developed on Earth, where the UV light powers a s...

Color image taken with the Hubble Space Telecope’s WFPC2 camera, showing the dumbbell-shaped cloud of gas and dust around the star. This nebula contains more than 10 times the mass of our Sun, which was ejected by Eta Carinae in the 19th century Great Eruption.
Credit: N. Smith (U. Arizona) and NASA.

Observations from the Gemini South and other telescopes in Chile played a critical role in understanding light echoes from a stellar eruption which occurred almost 200 years ago. Gemini spectroscopy shows that ejected material from the blast is the fastest ever seen from a star that remained intact. Imagine traveling to the Moon in just 20 seconds! That’s how fast material from a 170 year old stellar eruption sped away from the unstable, eruptive, and extremely massive star Eta Carinae.

Astro...

This is an artist impression of the collision of two stars, like the ones that formed CK Vul. The inset illustrates the inner structure of one red giant before the merger. A thin layer of 26-aluminum (brown) surrounds a helium core. An extended convective envelope (not to scale), which forms the outermost layer of the star, can mix material from inside the star to the surface, but it never reaches deep enough to dredge 26-aluminum up to the surface. Only a collision with another star can disperse 26-aluminum.
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello

Astronomers have made the first definitive detection of a radioactive molecule in interstellar space: a form, or isotopologue of aluminum monofluoride (26AlF)...

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein’s general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field near the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. This long-sought result represents the climax of a 26-year-long observation campaign using ESO’s telescopes in Chile.

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time clearly revealed the effects of Einstein’s general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field very close to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. This long-sought result represents the climax of a 26-year-long observation campaign using ESO’s telescopes in Chile.

Obscure...