July 2018

Jupiter and its aurora

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An article published in the journal “Science” describes a research on the influence shown on the aurorae at Jupiter’s poles by its moons Io and Ganymede. A team led by Alessandro Mura of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, Italy, analyzed data collected in particular from the NASA’s Juno space probe’s JIRAM instrument, discovering that Io leaves a series of long traces in Jupiter’s aurorae while Ganymede leaves a double “shadow” in them.

The Eta Carinae system (Image NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes a research on the Eta Carinae system, which consists of two giant blue stars with an overall brightness millions of times the Sun’s. A team led by astrophysicist Kenji Hamaguchi of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center used observations carried out with the NuSTAR telescope between March 2014 and June 2016 and other space telescopes to conclude that the two stars are probably accelerating very high energy particles and that some will reach the Earth in the form of cosmic rays.

The PDS 70 system (Image ESO/A. Müller et al.)

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Two articles to be published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describe the discovery and characterization of a planet still in its formation phase orbiting the young star PDS 70. Two teams of astronomers used the SPHERE instrument installed on ESO’s VLT to obtain for the first time images of a planet while it’s forming in what is still more or less a disk of gas and dust around the star. Called PDS 70b, the planet is a gas giant that could be larger than expected for its age.