2020

The Dragon cargo spacecraft departing International Space Station to end its CRS-20 mission (Image NASA TV)

1

A few hours ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-20 (Cargo Resupply Service 20) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly in the Pacific Ocean a bit more than 800 kilometers (about 500 miles) off the coast of California. The Dragon left the International Space Station yesterday. For SpaceX, this is the conclusion of the first contract with NASA to transport resupplies to the Station with the first version of the Dragon cargo spacecraft.

Shortly after landing, SpaceX boats went to retrieve the Dragon to transport it to the coast. The cargo brought back to Earth will be delivered to NASA soon, probably tomorrow. The Dragon spacecraft reached the International Space Station on March 9, 2020.

Artist's concept of white dwarf pair

0

An article to be published in the “Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the discovery of a binary system formed by two white dwarfs with helium cores orbiting each other in 1201 seconds, one of the shortest orbital periods known in binary systems. A team of researchers led by astronomer Warren Brown of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cfa) used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) of the pair cataloged as SDSS J232230.20+050942.06, or simply J2322+0509, conducting follow-up observations with others instruments to examine their characteristics. It’s a possible source of gravitational that will be detected by the LISA sallite currently being designed by ESA.

The star LHS 1815

0

An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” reports the discovery of the exoplanet LHS 1815b thanks to NASA’s TESS space telescope. A team of researchers led by Tianjun Gan of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, confirmed the existence of that planet using various ground-based photometric, spectroscopic and photographic instruments. The conclusion is that its size is slightly higher than the Earth’s, but it’s much denser for a mass up to 8.7 times the Earth’s. The most unique feature is that it’s the first exoplanet discovered in the Milky Way’s so-called thick disk, one of the structures that make up about two thirds of disk galaxies.

3XMM J215022.4-055108 in the circle (Image NASA, ESA, and D. Lin (University of New Hampshire))

0

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the discovery of the best evidence so far of the existence of intermediate-mass black holes. A team of researchers led by Dacheng Lin of the University of New Hampshire used the Hubble Space Telescope for a follow-up study based on X-ray data collected by other space telescopes that observed the source cataloged as 3XMM J215022.4-055108. The result is that this source is located in a dense star cluster on the periphery of another galaxy and the characteristics indicate that it’s an intermediate-mass black hole with a mass over 50,000 times the Sun’s.

The quasar MG J0414+0534

0

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the observation of jets of energetic particles coming from a supermassive black hole interacting with clouds of gas around them in the quasar MG J0414+0534, about 11 billion light years away. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to observe that quasar, but its details were detected thanks to a gravitational lensing effect generated by a galaxy between the quasar and the Earth. The interaction between jets and clouds suggests that the quasar’s radio activity is at an early stage and therefore useful to better understand the early stages of evolution of the galaxies that host a quasar in the early universe.