An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS) describes a research that provides an explanation to a mystery about Saturn’s rings applicable to those of any other celestial body. According to the international team that carried out this research, rings have a universal particle distribution following precise mathematical laws.
It’s nicknamed the Southern Owl Nebula and its an extraordinarily symmetrical and round planetary nebula. Using ESO’s VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile now it’s been possible to capture an extraordinary image of this dying star and what’s left around it. The result gives the impression of a sphere lit up like a ghost in the darkness of space.
An article published in recent days in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research showing that about 30% of the stars in the Milky Way – which means nearly one in three – moved dramatically from the orbit it had at its birth. This surprising result was achieved by a team of scientists who worked on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observing for a four-year period 100,000 stars with the SDSS Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Explorer (APOGEE) spectrograph.
Its aurora is 10,000 times more powerful than any other ever seen, somuch as to be detectable, although with very sophisticated instruments, from a distance of 18 light years. It was found on a brown dwarf called LSR J1835+3259 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the Hale Telescope in California and the Keck Telescope in Hawaii. The results of this research have just been published in the journal “Nature”.
