May 2019

Artist's concept of the exoplanet NGTS4b and its star (Image courtesy University of Warwick/Mark Garlick)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the discovery of an exoplanet belonging to the mini-Neptune class in an orbit close to its star, where a planet of that type should not exist, so much that it’s called Neptunian Desert. A team of astronomers coordinated by the University of Warwick used the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) array in Chile to locate the exoplanet, which was therefore cataloged as NGTS-4b. It may have got closer to its star or was originally larger but part of its atmosphere was consumed by stellar radiation.

Nakhla meteorite (Photo NASA)

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An article published in the journal “Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta” reports the evidence that on the planet Mars there were hydrothermal springs and an atmosphere much thicker than the current one until just over a billion years ago. A team of researchers led by planetary geologist Nicola Mari of the University of Glasgow studied 5 of the 20 Martian meteorites from the group of nakhlites identified on Earth, analyzing in particular sulfur isotopes finding traces of hydrothermal springs and a thick atmosphere of up to about 1.3 billion years ago. An environment capable of sustaining life forms similar to the the Earth’s still existed at that time, more than two billion later than previously thought.

A solar eruption (Image SDO/NASA)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports the observation of a huge coronal mass ejection (CME), a huge stellar eruption in which an enormous amount of materials is thrown out, by the star HR 9024. A team of researchers led by Constance Argiroffi of the University of Palermo and associated of the National Institute of Astrophysics used data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to find traces of the ejection of a mass about 10,000 times greater than that of the most powerful events of that kind generated by the Sun.

The differences between the two faces of the Moon could be due to the impact of a dwarf planet

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An article published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets” reports the results of computer simulations generated to explain the asymmetry of the two faces of the Moon. A team of researchers used data from NASA’s GRAIL mission as a reference to try to reproduce the Moon’s situation, concluding that the best explanation comes from the simulation of the impact of a dwarf planet with a diameter of about 780 kilometers on the current Earth-facing Moon’s side at about 22,500 km/h.

60 Starlink satellites blasting off a Falcon 9 rocket (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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A few hours ago 60 satellites of the Starlink constellation were launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. After just over an hour they were successfully deployed into their orbit at an altitude of about 440 kilometers all together and then started slowly disperse. This is SpaceX’s first mission to put the Starlink constellation into orbit to provide a global Internet connection coverage.