Telescopes

The giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein)

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The Las Cumbres Observatory has captured a new image of the giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) that shows its activity despite its considerable distance given that it’s far beyond Saturn’s orbit. The information collected also by looking into archive images such as the ones that allowed to identify it in an image from 2014 is useful to better understand its characteristics. In particular, initial estimates suggested that its diameter was at least 100 kilometers, three times the largest known comet, but these are estimates based on the absence of a coma. C/2014 UN271 will remain far from the Sun, arriving close to Saturn’s orbit at the beginning of 2031, so it can only be admired with telescopes but it could still be very interesting because it probably comes from the Oort cloud.

The galaxies NGC 1300, and NGC 1087, NGC 3627 (top), NGC 4254 and NGC 4303 (bottom)

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ESO has published some images created during the PHANGS project using the MUSE instrument on the VLT. These are images of galaxies in the nearby universe in which researchers from the PHANGS project tried to identify stellar nurseries. The aim is to get answers to the questions that still exist about star formation. For this reason, the investigation conducted with the MUSE instrument is a part of a larger project that includes other parallel investigations conducted with the ALMA radio telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The central area of ​​the Milky Way with SgrA*

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports a study on Sagittarius A*, or SgrA*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, observed during a flare after it swallowed gas and dust in large quantities. A team of researchers used observations conducted simultaneously in 2019 with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s VLT interferometer and with the Spitzer, NuSTAR, and Chandra space telescopes to obtain infrared and X-ray data of the flare. This made it possible to create a detailed model of that type of flare.

Scheme of Jupiter's X-ray auroras

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports a study on the planet Jupiter’s auroras that offers a solution to the mystery of X-ray emissions. A team of researchers obtained the crucial information thanks to data collected by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope and NASA’s Juno space probe. That allowed them to understand how ions are transported by the electromagnetic waves present in the Jovian magnetic field to the planet’s atmosphere, with which they collide to generate the auroras.

SMSS 2003-1142 at the center (Image courtesy Da Costa/SkyMapper)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the identification of what is considered a magnetorotational hypernova, the explosion of a very massive star with a powerful magnetic field and in rapid rotation. A team of researchers led by David Yong, Gary Da Costa, and Chiaki Kobayashi collected evidence of this type of hypernova for the first time. That was achieved by examining the data collected not directly but by investigating a mysterious red giant star discovered in the Milky Way halo and cataloged as SMSS J200322.54-114203.3, or simply SMSS 2003-1142, in which there are anomalous quantities of some chemical elements explainable as the product of a magnetorotational hypernova.