Stars

Artistic concept of a star getting close to a supermassive black hole (Image ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes a research about ASASSN-15lh, which had been classified as a superluminous supernova after it was discovered in 2015. An international team led by Giorgos Leloudas of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and the Dark Cosmology Centre, Denmark, examined the observations made with various telescopes and concluded that it was actually a star destroyed by a supermassive black hole.

The HD 163296 system (Image ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); A. Isella; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF))

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An article published in the journal “Physical Review Letters” describes the evidence of the presence of two newborn planets in the HD 163296 star system. A team of astronomers led by Andrea Isella of the Rice University in Houston used the ALMA radio telescope to study two major gaps that have left a mark in both the dust and in gas portion of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the star.

Artistic representation of millisecond pulsar deforming its compaion star (Image NASA)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a study of a binary system consisting of a millisecond pulsar known as PSR J1723-2837 and a small common star. Astrophysicist John Antoniadis of the University of Toronto and the amateur astronomer André van Staden discovered for the first time starspots and a powerful magnetic field in a millisecond pulsar’s companion. It’s a research that can help better understand this type of pulsar’s behavior.

Protoplanetary disk in the HD 142527 system (Image ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Kataoka et al.)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes a new research on young system HD 142527. The ALMA radio telescope had already been used in the past to study the protoplanetary disk around the star but this time an international team of astronomers led by Akimasa Kataoka measured with precision the size of the dust particles that form it.

Summary of the research on K2-3d (Image courtesy National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)

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An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” describes a research on the exoplanet K2-3d. This is a super-Earth discovered using the Kepler space telescope. An international team of researchers added more data collected later by the Spitzer space telescope and the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory’s telescope to get a more accurate measurement of this potentially habitable planet’s orbital period.