Sloan Digital Sky Survey tagged posts

Magnetic activity plays key role in exoplanet habitability. Astronomers have found evidence that some stars boast unexpectedly strong surface magnetic fields, a discovery that challenges current models of how they evolve.

In stars like our sun, surface magnetism is linked to stellar spin, a process similar to the inner workings of a hand-cranked flashlight. Strong magnetic fields are seen in the hearts of magnetic sunspot regions, and cause a variety of space weather phenomena...

The fifth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is collecting data about our universe for Vanderbilt University astronomers and other project members to use to explore the formation of distant galaxies and supermassive black holes, and to map the Milky Way.

The SDSS-V will make full use of existing satellites, including NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, to lead to new discoveries. Keivan Stassun, Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy, is co-investigator of NASA TESS, which enabled the discovery of a newly formed exoplanet in June 2020. That discovery boosted the potential for a joint effort with SDSS data.

“SDSS-V will magnify the exoplanet discoveries from TESS, both retrospectively and prospectively,” Stassun said...

Artist’s illustration of turbulent winds of gas swirling around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiraling inward, but some is being blown away.

New research led by astrophysicists at York University has revealed the fastest winds ever seen at UV wavelengths near a supermassive black hole. “We’re talking wind speeds of 20% the speed of light, which is more than 200 million kilometres an hour. That’s equivalent to a category 77 hurricane,” says Jesse Rogerson, York U. “And we have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster.”

Astronomers have known about the existence of quasar winds since the late 1960s. At least 1 in 4 quasars have them...

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the compact green pea galaxy J0925+1403. The diameter of the galaxy is approximately 6,000 light years, and it is about twenty times smaller than the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

Astronomers gain a new understanding of the re-ionization of the universe by studying a nearby dwarf ‘green pea’ galaxy. Newly formed dwarf galaxies were likely the reason that the universe heated up about 13 billion years ago. The finding opens an avenue for better understanding the early period of the universe’s 14 billion year history.

In the period of several hundred thousand yrs after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that matter was ionized instead of being in a neutral form...