An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes the discovery of the star EBLM J0555-57Ab. It’s the smallest star ever discovered, with a size very to the planet Saturn’s. Its mass is about 85 times Jupiter’s but, despite being concentrated in a relatively small volume, has barely enough mass and density to maintain nuclear fusion of hydrogen and thus be a true star.
Yesterday NASA started publishing the first raw photos of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot taken by the Juno space probe during its July 10 flyby. All the scientific instruments were active but JunoCam is the one that has obtained the most spectacular results with the pictures of the iconic storm larger than the Earth. From now on, many fans started processing the images by contributing to the NASA database.
An article to be published in the “Astronomical Journal” describes a study of possible errors made in the density estimates of the exoplanets discovered using the transit method. Elise Furlan of Caltech/IPAC-NExScl and Steve Howell of NASA’s Ames Research Center analyzed the effect of the presence of a companion star on estimating the density of exoplanets in those systems, concluding that some of them are actually less dense than calculated.
Two articles, one published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” and one in the “Astrophysical Journal Letters”, describe different aspects of a research on the supernova 1987A (SN 1987A). Several researchers used the ALMA radio telescope discovering for the first time a series of molecules in the supernova remnants. This allowed to create a 3D map of what was called a dust factory and to find clues even about star birth.
Three articles published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describe various aspects of the observation of the galaxy SGAS J111020.0+645950.8, 11 billion light years away from Earth, with the Hubble Space Telescope. So much attention is due to the fact that the team of astronomers who conducted this study had to use a gravitational lens to conduct the observations and use a very sophisticated analysis to sharpen the images, which also show star formation areas.
