June 2022

A comparison between the Earth and the exoplanet TOI-1807 b (Image Nardiello/NASA – Eyes-on-exoplanets)

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports a study of the exoplanet TOI-1807 b, a rocky planet discovered in 2020 thanks to NASA’s TESS space telescope. A team of researchers led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics and the University of Padua used the HARPS-N spectrograph installed on the Galileo National Telescope in the Canary Islands to conduct follow-up examinations of TOI-1807 b. The conclusion is that it’s a slightly larger exoplanet than Earth but the main peculiarity is that it’s the youngest of the type with an ultra-short period orbit, as it’s estimated to be around 300 million years old and its year lasts about 13 hours.

The CAPSTONE satellite blasting off atop an Electron rocket (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago, NASA’s CAPSTONE satellite was launched atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the base in New Zealand. For about six days, the rocket’s upper Photon stage will carry CAPSTONE toward the Moon and then separate and let it travel for more than four months. Eventually, this CubeSat-class satellite will enter a so-called near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) to study its dynamics for at least six months. This is the orbit into which NASA’s Lunar Gateway, a crucial element of the Artemis program, is scheduled to be placed, so there’s the need to check for unexpected problems, which includes communications.

On the left the galaxy NGC 1309 and on the right images of the area where the supernova SN 2012Z occurred, captured over the years

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports a study of the consequences of the supernova cataloged as SN 2012Z, considered to be of the type Iax, which means that it’s the explosion of a white dwarf. A team of researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to study its remnants and found that the star survived the supernova and is even brighter than before. One possibility is that the explosion was too weak to scatter the remnants of the white dwarf into interstellar space with the result that they started re-aggregating.

An area of Gale Crater (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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NASA has released the results of data analysis recently collected by its Mars Rover Curiosity during its ascent of Mount Sharp on Mars. After spending years in areas of Gale Crater that surround the zone where there were still many traces of the ancient presence of water, Curiosity started traveling in a transition zone from a clay-rich region to one full of sulfate salt. The interest in that area is given by the fact that it shows the traces of the great climatic changes that transformed a planet that, when it was young, was similar to the Earth into today’s red planet.

One of the star systems discovered in the Virgo cluster seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (Image courtesy Michael Jones)

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An article submitted for publication to “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of star systems that are even smaller than a dwarf galaxy and are isolated from any normal galaxy. A team of researchers examined a catalog of gas clouds found in a previous survey looking for new galaxies and found small clusters that contain mostly young blue stars scattered irregularly within the Virgo galaxy cluster. These are cases similar to the one cataloged as SECCO 1, another system discovered in the Virgo cluster and reported in an article published in February 2018 in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”. The discovery of other such groups may help to understand their origin.