An article published in the journal “The Astophysical Journal Letters” reports the study of stars surrounded by iron dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite dwarf galaxies. A team of researchers led by Ester Marini, a doctoral student of the “Roma Tre” University, Rome, Italy, used data collected by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to examine these stars that are in a phase of their life in which they lose their outer layers. Normally, that type of stars is surrounded by silicates and the anomaly is interesting because the dusts are important in the formation of new stars and planets as well.

An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the observation of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) cataloged as GRB 171205A associated with a supernova cataloged as SN 2017iuk that was tens of times brighter than that type of event generally is, so as to fall into the category of hypernovae. A team of astronomers led by Luca Izzo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) detected for the first time interaction between the jet that caused the GRB and the outer layers of the exploded star. This allowed to better understand the mechanisms that combine hypernovae and gamma-ray bursts, connected to a “hot cocoon”.

An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of a type Ia supernova, cataloged as SN 2015 cp. A team of astronomers led by Melissa Graham of the University of Washington used observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and others to study a binary system in which a star that could be a red giant ejected huge amounts of materials and a part reached its companion, a white dwarf, causing its explosion.