Blogs about stars
An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes a research on U Antliae, a rather exotic red giant star. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to study the bubble of ejected materials that surrounds U Antliae to better understand the evolution of stars in the last stages of their life cycle. That’s a turbulent period in which they can visibly change their volume and their brightness in relatively short times.
An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes the first observation of an irregularity in the rotation period of a pulsar, a phenomenon called glitch, in a binary system. A team of scientists from the Middle East Technical University and Baskent University, both in Ankara, Turkey, used data collected from observations of the Swift, XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes conducted over two years to identify glitches in the pulsar SXP 1062.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes the discovery of PSR J0952-0607, the millisecond pulsar with the highest rotation speed in the galactic field. A team of researchers used the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope to investigate high-energy sources detecting this pulsar that spins at over 42,000 rotations per minute, 707 per second.
An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes a research that revealed a surprise in the origin of electromagnetic radiation from the Crab Nebula that can influence the research on cosmic rays. Federico Fraschetti of the University of Arizona, USA, and Martin Pohl of the University of Potsdam, Germany, believe that the model created by Enrico Fermi in 1949 is to be partially revised because those radiation are produced in a way different from what was thought.
An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the first detection in the distant universe of the carbon hydride molecule, or CH+. A team led by Edith Falgarone of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Observatoire de Paris, France, used the ALMA radio telescope to discover that cold and turbulent gas in galaxies of the starburst type such as SMM J2135-0102, nicknamed Cosmic Eyelash. This discovery will help to better understand the mechanisms of galaxy growth and the periods of rapid star formation.
