Category Astronomy/Space

Artists impression of GJ 3470b and its host star. Image credit: NAOJ.

A team of astronomers have used the LCOGT network to detect light scattered by tiny particles (called Rayleigh scattering), through the atmosphere of a Neptune-size transiting exoplanet. This suggests a blue sky on this world which is only 100 light years away from us.

When the orbit of an exoplanet is aligned just right for transits to occur, astronomers can measure the planet’s size at different wavelengths in order to generate a spectrum of its atmosphere >> reveals substances in the planet’s atmosphere, thus composition. This measurement is most often performed using infrared light, where the planet is brightest and most easily observed...

A black hole devouring a star. Credit: NASA

An international team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a star being swallowed by a black hole and ejecting a flare of matter moving at nearly the speed of light.
The finding tracks the star—about the size of our sun—as it shifts from its customary path, slips into the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole and is sucked in. “These events are extremely rare,” van Velzen said. “It’s the first time we see everything from the stellar destruction followed by the launch of a conical outflow, also called a jet, and we watched it unfold over several months.”

Astrophysicists had predicted that when a black hole is force-fed a large amount of gas, in this case a whole star, then a ...

A prototype station of AugerPrime: Every water-Cherenkov detector containing 12,000 l of water is extended by a four-square-meter scintillation detector. Credit: Pierre Auger Collaboration

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, an international large-scale experiment to study cosmic rays, will be continued until 2025 and extended to “AugerPrime”. The observatory will be upgraded with new scintillation detectors for a more detailed measurement of gigantic air showers. This is required to identify cosmic objects that accelerate atomic particles up to highest energies.

The Pierre Auger Observatory in the province of Mendoza/Argentina is the world’s biggest and best known project for studying high-energy cosmic rays...

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

This curious galaxy—only known by the seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers 2MASX J16270254+4328340—has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope dancing the crazed dance of a galactic merger. The galaxy has merged with another galaxy leaving a fine mist, made of millions of stars, spewing from it in long trails.

Despite the apparent chaos, this snapshot of the gravitational tango was captured towards the event’s conclusion. This transforming galaxy is heading into old age with its star-forming days coming to an end. The true drama occurred earlier in the process, when the various clouds of gas within the two galaxies were so disturbed by the event that they collapsed, triggering an eruption of star formation...