Category Astronomy/Space

In this artist’s conception, a carbon planet orbits a sunlike star in the early universe. Young planetary systems lacking heavy chemical elements but relatively rich in carbon could form worlds made of graphite, carbides and diamond rather than Earth-like silicate rocks. Blue patches show where water has pooled on the planet’s surface, forming potential habitats for alien life. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA). Sun image: NASA/SDO

Our Earth consists of silicate rocks and an iron core with a thin veneer of water and life. But the first potentially habitable worlds to form might have been very different. New research suggests that planet formation in the early universe might have created carbon planets consisting of graphite, carbides, and diamond...

A sequence of snapshots from a simulation showing a red giant star tunneling through a high density gas clump. The star is moving downward in the illustration, as indicated by the bow-shaped “onion skin” surfaces of constant density. Soon after the star plunges into the clump, it develops a high temperature “blister” at the point of impact and a full turbulent wake behind it. Credit: Georgia Tech

Why is the center of the Milky Way filled with young stars but has very few old ones. According to the theory, the remnants of older, red giant stars are still there – they just aren’t bright enough to be detected with telescopes...

Image around SN 2012dn obtained by the Kanata Telescope at Higashi-Hiroshima Observatory. SN 2012dn is seen near the center of this figure. The host galaxy ESO 462-G016 is seen on the left side of SN 2012dn. The distance to this galaxy is known to be 130 mega-light-years. Because the supernova is a point source, the expansion cannot be measured, but the evolutions of the brightness and color are obtained. Credit: Higashi-Hiroshima Observatory

Using Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research (OISTER), researchers discovered an anomalously strong infrared emission from ‘the extraordinary supernova’ SN 2012dn, which has never been observed in other Type Ia supernovae to date...

Artist’s concept of the Milky Way. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy team has reported the detection of resonant acoustic oscillations of stars in ‘M4’, one of the oldest known clusters of stars in the Galaxy, some 13 billion years old. Using data from the NASA Kepler/K2 mission, they studied resonant oscillations asteroseismology. These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in brightness, and are caused by sound trapped inside the stars. By measuring the tones in this ‘stellar music’, it is possible to determine the mass and age of individual stars. Thus asteroseismology can be used to study early history of our Galaxy.

The M4 cluster (top) with sections showing white dwarf stars shown in the bottom left and right...