An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the mapping of aluminum monoxide in a cloud around the young star Orion Source I. A team led by Shogo Tachibana of the University of Tokyo used the ALMA radio telescope to study the protoplanetary disk around to the star discovering that molecule in a cloud of limited distribution, which suggests that in its gas form it quickly condenses to form solid grains. That’s an interesting discovery because aluminum monoxide was discovered in meteorites such as the one known as Allende meteorite and that suggests that there are points in common between the history of the solar system and that of the Orion Source I system.

An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports the discovery that almost all blue supergiant stars show a shimmer in brightness on their surface. A team of researchers coordinated by the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) of Leuven, Belgium, used both observations made with NASA’s Kepler and TESS space telescopes and computer simulations based also on asteroseismology to study them thanks to the fact that that shimmer is caused by the presence of gravity waves on the surface of those very massive stars.