Category Astronomy/Space

An illustration shows the HD 142527 binary star system from data captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The red body orbiting the center represents the low-mass companion star. Click image for a larger version. Illustration by B. Saxton/NRAO/AUI/NSF

Rice Uni Assistant Professor Andrea Isella presented images of binary system HD 142527 by Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. The system has long been known to harbor a planet-forming corona of dust and gas, but ALMA images are providing more detail than ever and allowing for better analysis of the system’s contents and mechanics.

Isella studies the formation of planetary systems...

The galaxy NGC 300, home to the unusual system Binder and her colleagues studied. The spiral galaxy is over 6 million light years away.NASA/JPL-Caltech/OCIW

A star pretending to be a supernova mystery illustrates the importance of being in the right place at the right time. Such was the case in May 2010 when an amateur South African astronomer pointed his telescope toward NGC300, a nearby galaxy. He discovered what appeared to be a supernova—a massive star ending its life in a blaze of glory. After a star explodes as a supernova, it usually leaves behind either a black hole or a neutron star—the collapsed, high-density core of the former star. Neither should be visible to Earth after a few weeks. But this supernova—SN 2010da—still was.
“SN 2010da is what we call a ‘supernova impost...

A false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft showing the glow the aurora about 1,000 km above the cloud tops of Saturn’s south pole (credit NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/ University of Leicester)

The evidence that Saturn’s upper atmosphere may, when buffeted by the solar wind, emit the same total amount of mass per second into its magnetosphere as its moon, Enceladus, has been found by UCL scientists working on the Cassini mission. Magnetospheres are regions of space that are heavily influenced by the magnetic field of a nearby planet and can contain charged particles in the form of plasma from both external and internal sources.

In the case of Saturn, its moon Enceladus ejects water from its icy plumes which is ionised into H2O+, O+, OH+ ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of ground-based observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity a century ago, and scientists have been attempting to detect them for 50 years. He pictured these waves as ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by massive, accelerating bodies, such as black holes orbiting each other.

Just as in other areas of astronomy, astronomers need both ground-based and space-based observatories to take full advantage of this new window...