An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes an analysis of the chemical composition of a kind of plasma shrapnel ejected from the Vela supernova remnant. A team led by Federico García of the Argentinian Institute of Radioastronomy used the XMM-Newton Space Telescope to study the plasma jets around the the supernova remnant discovering an abnormal abundance of silicon.
An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the creation of the most detailed image of the surface and atmosphere of a star other than the Sun. A team of astronomers led by Keiichi Ohnaka of the Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to achieve this result with the red supergiant Antares. It’s also the first map of the materials that make up the atmosphere of a star other than the Sun.
An article published in the journal “Science” describes a research on the remnants of a strange supernova cataloged as LP 40-365. According to a team led by Stephane Vennes of the Astronomical Institute of Czech Academy of Sciences in Ondrejov, Czech Republic, that’s a type Iax supernova. It only partially destroyed a white dwarf leaving a part that moves at a very high speed and has an abnormal composition for that dead star type.
An article published in “Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes the observation of the collision of the supernova SN 2017cbv with a companion. A team of astronomers observed for the first time the details of this type of cosmic event that happened in the NGC 5643 galaxy and was spotted on Earth on March 10, 2017. This is due to the possibility of observing it for five days with the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) obtaining data suggesting that the companion was a normal star with a radius about 20 times the Sun’s.
An article to be pulished in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research on the age of the TRAPPIST-1 system. This ultra-cool dwarf star has become increasingly popular thanks to the results of research on its planets. One of the problems was to establish its age and astronomer Adam Burgasser of the University of California, San Diego, and Eric Mamajek of NASA’s JPL provided an estimate between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years.
