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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Extreme Supersonic Winds Measured on a Planet Outside our Solar System

    January 23, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33 000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jetstream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile and provides unique insights into the weather patterns of a distant world.

    Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33,000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jet stream of its kind ever measured on a planet...

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    Newly Discovered Group Hosts Two Optically Dark Star-Forming Galaxies

    January 22, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    New galaxy group detected by astronomers
    VISTA RGB color images of CGG-z4 at z ∼ 4.3 using the Ks (red), J (green), and i (blue) bands. Two spectroscopically confirmed galaxies have ALMA 3mm and 870µm continuum emission shown as green and yellow contours. Contours are shown at levels 5, 7, and 10σ. ALMA beam sizes and an image scale are shown in the lower right corner. The RGB frames are composed using linear scales with identical limits. Credit: Brinch et al., 2025.

    An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new compact galaxy group using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The new group, designated CGG-z4, hosts two optically dark star-forming galaxies. The finding was detailed in a research paper published on the pre-print server arXiv.

    Galaxy groups are the smallest aggrega...

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    Mars’s Rare Disappearing Solar Wind Event explained

    January 20, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Mars's rare disappearing solar wind event explained
    Illustration of Martian ionosphere and magnetosphere pre-, during and post-disappearing solar wind event. Credit: Ram et al., 2024.

    Mars’s atmosphere and climate are impacted by interactions with solar wind, a stream of plasma comprised of protons and electrons that flows from the sun’s outermost atmosphere (corona), traveling at speeds of 400–1,000 kilometers per second.

    As these charged particles interact with the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, we may see spectacular auroras over polar regions on Earth. Given Mars’s lack of a global magnetic field, auroras here are instead diffused across the planet.

    However, sometimes this solar wind can “disappear” in rare events when there is a gap in the solar wind path as the sun increases its solar activity...

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    This Tiny Galaxy is Answering Some Big Questions

    January 18, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Stars against a black space background
    This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the Leo P dwarf galaxy (stars at lower right represented in blue). Leo P is a star-forming galaxy located about 5 million light years away in the constellation Leo. A team of scientists collected data from about 15,000 stars in Leo P to deduce its star formation history.
    Kristen McQuinn/NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

    Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows.

    In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of researchers led by Kristen McQuinn, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Rutgers Unive...

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