Large Binocular Telescope tagged posts

A near-Earth asteroid named Kamo`oalewa could be a fragment of our moon, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona.

Kamooalewa is a quasi-satellite -- a subcategory of near-Earth asteroids that orbit the sun but remain relatively close to Earth. Little is known about these objects because they are faint and difficult to observe. Kamooalewa was discovered by the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii in 2016, and the name — found in a Hawaiian creation chant — alludes to an...

Image shows a composite where blue represents the MagAO data taken at H-alpha, and green and red show the LBT data taken at Ks and L’ bands. The greyscale is a previously published millimeter image of the disk. Credit: Photo credit: Stephanie Sallum

Capturing sharp images of distant objects is difficult, largely due to atmospheric turbulence, the mixing of hot and cold air. But researchers captured the first photo of a planet in the making, a planet residing in a gap in LkCa15’s protoplanetary disk. Of the roughly 2,000 known exoplanets, only about 10 have been imaged – and long after they had formed, not when they were in the making.

Protoplanetary disks form around young stars using the debris left over from the star’s formation...