Category Astronomy/Space

This artist’s rendering shows a large exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

There’s no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy – they’re so distant and faint compared to their stars, it’s hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have established a possible signpost for giant exoplanets. A new study finds that giant exoplanets that orbit far from their stars are more likely to be found around young stars that have a disk of dust and debris than those without disks. The study, published in The Astronomical Journal, focused on planets more than five times the mass of Jupiter...

Left: the nova system before eruption. Right: the nova system in outburst.
Credit: OGLE survey

University of Leicester contributes to best-ever results on a ‘new star’ in a nearby galaxy. Astronomers have today announced that they have discovered possibly the most luminous ‘new star’ ever – a nova discovered in the direction of one of our closest neighboring galaxies: The Small Magellanic Cloud.

Astronomers used Swift satellite observatory to help understand what was likely the most luminous white dwarf eruption ever seen. A nova happens when an old star erupts dramatically back to life...

L. Cortese, B. Catinella, S. Janowiecki. ALMA Shows that Gas Reservoirs of Star-forming Disks over the Past 3 Billion Years Are Not Predominantly Molecular. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, October 2017

Astronomers have shed fresh light on the importance of hydrogen atoms in the birth of new stars. Only hydrogen molecules are thought to directly fuel star formation but research published shows there are more hydrogen atoms than molecules even in young galaxies that are making a lot of stars. Astrophysicist Dr Luca Cortese, from The University of Western Australian node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said new stars are constantly forming in the Universe. “New stars are born in dense clouds of gas and dust that are found in most galaxies,” he said...

The South Pole-Aitken basin is the darker area at the bottom of this image.
Credit: Photo by NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterScientific Visualization Studio

A large basin on the moon has revealed that its interior is made of a different mineral than Earth’s interior, contradicting the theory that the interior of the planets look mostly the same. The mantle of the Earth is made mostly of a mineral called olivine, and the assumption is usually that all planets are like the Earth,” said Jay Melosh, Distinguished Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, who led the study. “But when we look at the spectral signature of rocks exposed deep below the moon’s surface, we don’t see olivine; we see orthopyroxene.”

Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid collided wit...