2022

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.

6 of the systems studied in the Gemini-LIGHTS survey

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An article accepted for publication in “The Astronomical Journal” reports the results of the Gemini-LIGHTS survey on 44 young massive stars. A team of researchers used the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) mounted on the Gemini South telescope in Chile to study the disks of materials around these stars to see if planets and ring structures have formed inside them. The results revealed the presence of possible planets and even brown dwarfs with differences between disks surrounding stars up to three times the mass of the Sun and disks surrounding more massive stars.

The HD 53143 system seen by ALMA (Image ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. MacGregor (U. Colorado Boulder); S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF))

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An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of a study of the young system of HD 53143, in which a Sun-like star is surrounded by a disk of materials with a structure different from all those known so far which could include a planet. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to study that disk, which is very eccentric instead of being circular with the star in its center. The disk around HD 53143 has an elliptical shape and the star is in one of the foci of the ellipse, far from the center. The results were presented at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) held these days in Pasadena, California.