Category Astronomy/Space

Phase-folded K2 light curve of EPIC 228735255 (black points) with best-fit model plotted as a solid red line. Top panel: Full phase light curve with the transit of EPIC 228735255b. There are no other significant dips indicating any other transits. Middle panel: Zoom-in of the transit of EPIC 228735255b and the resulting residuals from it and the model fit. Bottom panel: Zoom-in around phase 0.5. There is no indication of an observable secondary eclipse. Credit: Giles et al., 2017.

An international team has identified a new extrasolar planet from the data provided by Kepler spacecraft’s prolonged mission known as K2. EPIC 228735255b, is a “hot Jupiter” on an eccentric orbit around its parent star...

Co-orbital bodies that orbit the Sun in the same direction as a planet can follow trajectories (blue curves with arrows) that, from the perspective of the planet, look like tadpoles, horseshoes or ‘quasi-satellites’. Credit: Helena Morais & Fathi Namouni

In our solar system, an asteroid orbits the sun in the opposite direction to the planets. Asteroid 2015 BZ509, also known as Bee-Zed, takes 12 years to make one complete orbit around the sun. This is the same orbital period as that of Jupiter, which shares its orbit but moves in the opposite direction. The asteroid with the retrograde co-orbit was identified by Helena Morais, a professor at São Paulo State University’s Institute of Geosciences & Exact Sciences (IGCE-UNESP). Morais had predicted the discovery 2 years earlier.

“It’s good to...

Artist’s conception shows two supermassive black holes, similar to those observed by UNM researchers, orbiting one another more than 750 million light years from Earth. Credit: Joshua Valenzuela/UNM

For the first time ever, astronomers at The University of New Mexico say they’ve been able to observe and measure the orbital motion between two supermassive black holes hundreds of millions of light years from Earth – a discovery more than a decade in the making. In early 2016, an international team, including a UNM alumnus, working on the LIGO project detected gravitational waves, confirming Albert Einstein’s 100-year-old prediction. These waves were the result two stellar mass black holes (~30 solar mass) colliding in space within the Hubble time...

The solar array cooling system for the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft — one element of which is the large, square black radiator visible at center, one of two that will be installed — is shown undergoing thermal testing at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in late February. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

As NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft begins its first historic encounter with the sun’s corona in late 2018 – flying closer to our star than any other mission in history – a revolutionary cooling system will keep its solar arrays at peak performance, even in extremely hostile conditions...