January 2023

The galaxy clusters MOO J1014+0038 (left panel) and SPT-CL J2106-5844 (right panel) as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument at infrareds

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of a study on the so-called intracluster light that permeates galaxy clusters. Hyungjin Joo and M. James Jee of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine ten galaxy clusters and the glow within them. The surprising and therefore interesting discovery was that intracluster light is abundant even in the oldest clusters, a sign that the stars that emit it were ejected from their galaxies a long time ago. This suggests that this happened at the same time as the formation and growth of the clusters.

An image captured by the IoIO instrument on November 9, 2022, showing the sodium nebula emissions from the outburst originating from Io

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A violent volcanic outburst was detected on Jupiter’s moon Io by Jeff Morgenthaler using the Io Input/Output observatory (IoIO) at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI). The scientist of this non-profit organization based in Arizona has been monitoring Io since 2017, observing several outbursts but the one in autumn 2022 was the most violent. This monitoring can also be useful for the mission of NASA’s Juno space probe, in orbit around Jupiter, as NASA is planning a Io flyby in December 2023 in which its instruments will be able to carry out measurements of the emitted gases such as sodium and ionized sulfur.