A new image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments portrays the galaxy NGC 4485. It’s an irregular galaxy, which means that its shape is not among the normal ones for galaxies, a consequence of its passage through a much larger neighbor, NGC 4490, which altered the balance inside it and among other things also started the formation of new stars.
An article published in the journal “Science” reports the initial results of the exploration of the Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 nicknamed Ultima Thule by NASA’s New Horizons space probe. There are no particular surprises after the ones arrived thanks to the first images sent to the Earth but the following high-resolution ones along with spectrometric data and other data sent allowed to put together some more details about its characteristics from the mission team.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the mapping of aluminum monoxide in a cloud around the young star Orion Source I. A team led by Shogo Tachibana of the University of Tokyo used the ALMA radio telescope to study the protoplanetary disk around to the star discovering that molecule in a cloud of limited distribution, which suggests that in its gas form it quickly condenses to form solid grains. That’s an interesting discovery because aluminum monoxide was discovered in meteorites such as the one known as Allende meteorite and that suggests that there are points in common between the history of the solar system and that of the Orion Source I system.
An article published in the journal “Nature Geoscience” offers clues to the fact that the Moon may still be tectonically active. A team of researchers analyzed images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) space probe in 2010 discovering thousands of tectonic faults generated by the Moon’s progressive shrinking as it cooled down. Some researchers have been working on these geological analyzes since those photos were taken but initially they brought clues about a recent activity while the new clues indicate that an activity still exists.
An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” shows evidence that the oldest galaxies in the universe were brighter than expected. A team of researchers combined observations made with the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes of galaxies that formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang and discovered an unexpected infrared brightness. That’s the consequence of the release of ionizing radiation and that can offer new clues to the epoch of reionization, a crucial moment in the history of the universe.
