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    Category Astronomy/Space

    The heart of world’s largest solar telescope begins to beat

    April 28, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The world’s largest solar telescope, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, has reached an important milestone. After almost 15 years of preparation, the German instrument for the Inouye Solar Telescope, the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), has now taken its first images. The imaging spectro-polarimeter was developed and built at the Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) in Freiburg (Germany). The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen (Germany) is a partner in the project.

    The data published now were obtained during the technical commissioning of the instrument...

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    Disk discovery changes views on star and planet formation

    April 27, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The combination of theoretical models and empirical data provides a new perspective for understanding the complex interactions between young stars and their environments. Credit: Paolo Padoan, Liubin Pan, Veli-Matti Pelkonen, Troels Haugbølle and Ake Nordlund
    The combination of theoretical models and empirical data provides a new perspective for understanding the complex interactions between young stars and their environments. Credit: Paolo Padoan, Liubin Pan, Veli-Matti Pelkonen, Troels Haugbølle and Ake Nordlund

    A study led by Paolo Padoan, ICREA research professor at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), is challenging the understanding of planetary disk formation around young stars.

    The paper, published in Nature Astronomy, reveals that the environment plays a crucial role in determining the size and lifetime of these planetary disks, which are the sites of planet formation.

    When a star forms, it is surrounded by a spinning disk of gas and dust...

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    Astronomers Find Far-flung “Super Earths” Are Not Farfetched

    April 25, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist's concept illustrates the results of a new study that measured the masses of many planets relative to the stars that host them
    Caption: This artist’s concept illustrates the results of a new study that measured the masses of many planets relative to the stars that host them, leading to new information about populations of planets in the direction of the bulge of the Milky Way. This study, published in the journal Science, shows that super-Earths are common and places them in context with gas giant planets.

    Credit: Westlake University

    A new study shows that planets bigger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are common outside the Solar System.

    An international team including astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has announced the discovery of a planet about twice the size of Earth orbiting its star farther out than Saturn is to the sun.

    These results are another examp...

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    Innovative approaches advance search for ice on the moon

    April 24, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist rendering of what a future cosmic ray radar instrument could look like, attached to a satellite orbiting the Moon. Credit: Christian Miki, Department of Physics, UH Manoa.

    Scientists and space explorers have been on the hunt to determine where and how much ice is present on the Moon. Water ice would be an important resource at a future lunar base, as it could be used to support humans or be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen, key components of rocket fuel. University of Hawai’i at Manoa researchers are using two innovative approaches to advance the search for ice on the Moon.

    ShadowCam scouts for surface ice

    Water ice was previously detected in the permanently shaded regions of the Moon’s north and south poles by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai’i Institute o...

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