Circumstellar discs are believed to be key components in planetary formation. However, we have very little actual evidence of planets growing in the “rings” that surround young stars. So planet formation theorists were ecstatic to learn that two new papers in Astrophysical Journal Letters describe a planet that is actively forming in the gap it most likely created in the ring system of a young, Sun-like star.
The greatest challenge facing astrobiologists is that there is only one planet known to us that has life. Of all the bodies of the Solar System, only Earth has a dense atmosphere, liquid water on its surface, and the organic chemistry that supports life. However, these conditions did not exist billions of years ago when Earth was still young. While the nebula from which the planets formed was rich in volatile elements, the high temperatures in the inner Solar System largely prevented them from condensing, leaving them mostly in a gaseous state.
The detection of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in July produced quite the stir in the scientific community. This comet is the third interstellar object (ISO) to pass through the Solar System, the previous two being 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, which arrived in 2017 and 2019, respectively. Like its predecessors, the arrival of 3I/ATLAS highlighted just how common these objects are and inspired mission concepts for studying them up close. The latest comes from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), where a team has developed a mission study for a spacecraft that could perform a flyby with 3I/ATLAS.
The JWST has a well-earned reputation for delivering incredible images of the cosmos. From its very first image, the powerful space telescope has regularly wowed us with images of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, and other cosmic objects. One of the telescope's main science themes concerns the birth of stars, and in a new image, the JWST zoomed in on Pismis 24-1, a brilliant young star in the Pismis 24 cluster.
Radio astronomy took another step forward recently, with the completion of Phase III of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. We’ve reported before on how the MWA has investigated everything from SETI signals to the light from the earliest stars. WIth this upgrade, the MWA will continue to operate with much needed improvements while the radio astronomy awaits the completion of the successor it helped enable - the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).
One of the confounding things about astronomy is that simple dust is an obstacle that astronomers must work hard to overcome. In a Universe that contains beguiling things like supermassive black holes, amino acids on the surface of comets, and puzzling, powerful bursts of extragalactic radio waves, it's somewhat humbling that simple dust particles require so much effort to deal with. One of the reasons the powerful JWST was built is to deal with this dust.
Jupiter is well-known for the massive aurorae that occur near the planet's polar regions, the brightest and most powerful in the Solar System. Much like aurora here on Earth, these shimmering lights are the result of interaction between the planet's magnetic field and solar wind. Unlike Earth's, though, Jupiter's largest moons - Io, Europa, and Ganymede (aka. the Galileans) - leave their own auroral signatures in the planet's atmosphere. These induced aurorae are known as "satellite footprints" and track how each moon interacts with Jupiter and the local space environment.
Large exoplanets are more easily detected than small ones. It's axiomatic. While large planets block out more starlight during transits, small planets block out much less, letting them hide in the overpowering glare from their stars. To help detect sub-Jupiter mass exoplanets, astronomers search for the effect these planets can have on their surroundings.
One of the most difficult parts of astronomy is understanding how time affects it. The farther away you look in the universe, the farther back you look in time. One way this complicates things is how objects might change over time. For example, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the early universe might appear one way to our modern telescopes, but the same supermassive black hole might appear completely differently a few billion years later. Understanding the connection between the two objects would be difficult to say the least, but a new prerint paper on arXiv from researchers at the University of Science and Technology in South Korea describes one potential parallel, between the recently discovered “Little Red Dots” of the early universe and “BlueDOGs” of the slightly later universe.
In astronomy, some of the most profound discoveries happen by accident. As the saying goes, "The most exciting phrase in science is not 'eureka!' but 'that's funny.'" This was certainly the case with Matus Rybak - a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University - and his colleagues were observing RXJ1131-1231, a quasar located 6 billion light-years away in the constellation Crater. This active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a favorite among astronomers because of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center and the fact that there is an intervening galaxy between it and Earth.
Water is key to life as we know it. But that doesn’t mean its key to life everywhere. Despite the fact that the ability to house liquid water is one of the key characteristics we look for in potentially habitable exoplanets, there is nothing written in stone about the fact that life has to use water as a solvent as opposed to other liquid options. A new paper from researchers at MIT, including those who are developing missions to look for life on Venus, shows there might be an alternative - ionic liquids that can form and stay stable in really harsh conditions.
The Taurus star-forming region is only a few hundred light-years away, and it may be the nearest star formation region to Earth. It's a stellar nursery with hundreds of young stars, and attracts a lot of astronomers' attention. One of the young stars in Taurus is named IRAS 04302. IRAS 04302 is sometimes called the "Butterfly Star" because of its appearance when viewed edge-on.
Around 11,300 years ago, a massive star teetered on the precipice of annihilation. It pulsed with energy as it expelled its outer layers, shedding the material into space. Eventually it exploded as a supernova, and its remnant is one of the most studied supernova remnants (SNR). It's called Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and new observations with the Chandra X-ray telescope are revealing more details about its demise.
When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began science operations, one of its first tasks was to observe the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These observations revealed a huge population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that astronomers nicknamed "Little Red Dots" (LRDs), owing to their small appearance and deep red hue. Based on redshift measurements, these AGNs are estimated to have existed just 0.6 to 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang (13.2 to 12.2 billion years ago). Studying these objects has already triggered some groundbreaking discoveries about the early Universe.
Life is complicated, and not just in a philosophical sense. But one simple thing we know about life is that it requires energy, and to get that energy it needs certain fundamental elements. A new paper in preprint on arXiv from Giovanni Covone and Donato Giovannelli from the University of Naples discusses how we might use that constraint to narrow our search for stars and planets that could potentially harbor life. To put it simply, if it doesn’t have many of the constituent parts of the “building blocks” of life, then life probably doesn't exist there.
What role can the relationship between oxygen (O2) and ozone (O3) in exoplanet atmospheres have on detecting biosignatures? This is what a recent study submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated novel methods for identifying and analyzing Earth-like atmospheres. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for identifying exoplanet biosignatures, and potentially life as we know it.
When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned from its mission to asteroid Bennu in 2023, it brought back more than just ancient space rocks, it delivered answers to puzzles that have baffled astronomers for years. Among the most intriguing questions was why asteroids that should look identical through telescopes appear strikingly different colours from Earth.
The Butterfly Nebula, officially known as NGC 6302, earned its name from its distinctive wing like lobes that spread in opposite directions from a central dusty band. This striking shape isn't just beautiful, it’s a natural laboratory where scientists can study the very processes that create the raw materials for rocky planets like Earth.
All (or at least most) astronomical eyes are on 3I/ATLAS, our most recent interstellar visitor that was discovered in early July. Given its relatively short observational window in our solar system, and especially its impending perihelion in October, a lot of observational power has been directed towards it. That includes the most powerful space telescope of them all - and a recent paper pre-printed on arXiv describes what the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered in the comet’s coma. It wasn’t like any other it had seen before.
The recent discovery of the third known interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS, has brought about another round of debate on whether these objects could potentially be technological in origin. Everything from random YouTube channels to tenured Harvard professors have thoughts about whether ISOs might actually be spaceships, but the general consensus of the scientific community is that they aren’t. Overturning that consensus would require a lot of “extraordinary evidence”, and a new paper led by James Davenport at the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington lays out some of the ways that astronomers could collect that evidence for either the current ISO or any new ones we might find.
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