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    Stardust study resets how life’s atoms spread through space

    December 23, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A yellow star with a surrounding dust cloud
    Dust clouds reflect starlight around the star R Doradus. This image combines polarised visible light taken with the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and an image of the star’s surface taken with Alma. Credit: ESO/T. Schirmer/T. Khouri; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

    Starlight and stardust are not enough to drive the powerful winds of giant stars, transporting the building blocks of life through our galaxy. That’s the conclusion of a new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, of red giant star R Doradus. The result overturns a long-held idea about how the atoms needed for life are spread.

    The study, “An empirical view of the extended atmosphere and inner envelope of the asymptotic giant branch star R Doradus II...

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    Rare exoplanet orbits twin stars in ‘Star Wars’-like twist

    April 18, 2025, Categories  Uncategorized

    Astronomers find rare twist in exoplanet's twin star orbit
    A hypothetical office overlooking the Paranal Observatory in Chile, with the European Southern Observatory’s VLT visible with its laser on the hill, and the four small SPECULOOS telescopes nearer the foreground. In the sky is a depiction of the orbital configuration of the 2M1510 system with the two brown dwarf stars in red orbiting one another, and the inferred exoplanet on a polar orbit in white. Within the office, a poster celebrating the original discovery of 2M1510’s two brown dwarfs is on the wall, while diagrams and patterns showing the apsidal precession of the brown dwarf’s orbit caused by the planets are shown on the table the roof and the floor. Credit: University of Birmingham / Amanda Smith

    Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits at a 90-degree angle around a rare...

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    Brightest and Fastest-Growing: Astronomers Identify Record-Breaking Quasar

    February 20, 2024, Categories  Uncategorized

    Brightest and fastest-growing: astronomers identify record-breaking quasar
    This artist’s impression shows the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, this quasar has been found to be the most luminous object known in the universe to date. The supermassive black hole, seen here pulling in surrounding matter, has a mass 17 billion times that of the sun and is growing in mass by the equivalent of another sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole ever known. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

    Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have characterized a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind but also the most luminous object ever observed...

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    Black Hole at the Center of a Galaxy in the Early Universe received Less Mass Influx than expected, astronomers find

    January 31, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Reddish vortex seen from from the side above with a bright centre and a thin ray protruding vertically from the plane
    Cosmic powerhouse: Artist’s impression of a quasar whose core region was literally set in motion in the early universe. While galaxies often merged with each other at that time, large amounts of matter were thrown into the centres of the galaxies. When matter orbits the supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, energy is released, which explains the enormous brightness of an active galaxy. The quasar can therefore still be observed from a great distance today.
    © ESO / M. Kornmesser

    With the upgraded GRAVITY-instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory, a team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has determined the mass of a black hole in a galaxy only 2 billion years after the Big Bang...

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