Stars
The elliptical galaxy NGC 5018 and its neighbors show signs of past interactions
An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS). A team of researchers led by Marilena Spavone from INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, used ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) in Chile to obtain highly detailed images of many elliptical galaxies. Among them there’s NGC 5018, interesting among other things for structures such as what’s called a tidal tail, a stream of gas containing various stars stretching outwards from that galaxy. These are evidence of interactions between galaxies that provide information on the characteristics of primordial galaxies.
44 exoplanets detected by the Kepler space telescope confirmed in one go
An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” describes the confirmation of 44 exoplanets that are part of an original group of 72 candidates detected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. A team of researchers led by John Livingston of the University of Tokyo, Japan, used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe and ground-based telescopes in the US to confirm the existence of 44 exoplanets in one go and discover some of their characteristics. 16 of them have a radius less than twice the Earth’s.
An object at the limit between planet and brown dwarf with a very strong magnetic field
An article published in the “Astrophysical Journal” describes a study on the magnetic fields of five brown dwarfs, objects at the limit between the planet and the star, cold even by the standards of their category. A team of researchers used the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to examine the brown dwarfs chosen due to their radio wave emissions. The one cataloged as SIMP J01365663+0933473 is especially interesting because it’s at the limit between the planet and the brown dwarf and has a magnetic field over 200 times stronger than Jupiter’s.
A detection of the matter surrounding the black hole of the Cygnus X-1 system
An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes unprecedented observations of matter around a black hole. A team of researchers used the data detected using an X-ray polarimeter on board the PoGO+ satellite to obtain information on the part of hard X-rays that are reflected from the accretion disk around the black hole of the Cygnus X-1 system and identify the shape of the matter that composes it.
