Category Astronomy/Space

Artist’s conception of a brown dwarf, featuring the cloudy atmosphere of a planet and the residual light of an almost-star. Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL

Astronomers are hopeful that the powerful infrared capability of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will resolve a puzzle as fundamental as stargazing itself – what IS that dim light in the sky? Brown dwarfs muddy a clear distinction between stars and planets, throwing established understanding of those bodies, and theories of their formation, into question.

Several research teams will use Webb to explore the mysterious nature of brown dwarfs, looking for insight into both star formation and exoplanet atmospheres, and the hazy territory in-between where the brown dwarf itself exists...

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has features that resemble Earth’s geology, with deep, steep-sided canyons. Credit: Cassini/NASA/JPL

Titan, has features that resemble Earth’s geology, with deep, steep-sided canyons. Using the now-complete Cassini data set, Cornell astronomers have created a new global topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan that has opened new windows into understanding its liquid flows and terrain.

Creating the map took about a year, according to doctoral student Paul Corlies, first author on “Titan’s Topography and Shape at the End of the Cassini Mission.” The map combines all of the Titan topography data from multiple sources...

Image of our sun showing dark sunspots and bright diffuse faculae (best seen around the edges). A new study shows how the larger mix of heavy elements leave such spots unchanged, while increasing the contrast of the bright diffuse faculae. Credit: NASA/SDO

The spots on the surface on the Sun come and go with an 11-year periodicity known as the solar cycle. The solar cycle is driven by the solar dynamo, which is an interplay between magnetic fields, convection and rotation. However, our understanding of the physics underlying the solar dynamo is far from complete. One example is the Maunder Minimum, a period in the 17th century, where spots almost disappeared from the surface of the Sun for a period of over 50 years.

Now, a large international team has found a star that can help shed light ...

The star-forming region, 30 Doradus, is one of the largest located close to the Milky Way and is found in the neighboring galaxy, Large Magellanic Cloud. About 2,400 massive stars in the center of 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, are producing intense radiation and powerful winds as they blow off material. Credit: NASA

An international team has revealed an ‘astonishing’ overabundance of massive stars in a neighbouring galaxy. The discovery, made in the gigantic star-forming region 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, has ‘far-reaching’ consequences for our understanding of how stars transformed the pristine Universe into the one we live in today...