Astronomy / Astrophysics

Artist's concept of a gas filament disrupted by a star

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the detection of a hydrogen filament about three trillion kilometers long in the cosmic neighborhood. A team of researchers led by Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate at the Australian University of Sydney, and Dr. Artem Tuntsov of Manly Astrophysics, used the ASKAP radio telescope to discover this ultra-low-temperature gas just 13 light-years from the Earth. In recent years, a lot of gas that forms the baryonic matter considered to be missing has been discovered in filaments that unite different galaxies, in this case it’s inside the Milky Way and in astronomical terms very close.

Artist's concet of the pulsar PSR J2039-5617 and its companion (Image Knispel/Clark/Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/NASA GSFC)

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Two articles published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” report different aspects of the study that led to the identification of the rare characteristics of a gamma-ray source that turned out to be a pulsar, cataloged as PSR J2039-5617. Two teams with various researchers in common used data collected by the Fermi Space Telescope and other instruments, and relied on the help of citizen scientists participating in the Einstein@Home project to study the pulsar. It’s a rare type of pulsar because it belongs to the millisecond class and also to the so-called redback class, which has a red dwarf as a companion.

Artist's concept of Swift J1818.0-1607 with its magnetic field (Image courtesy OzGrav, Carl Knox)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports a study on the magnetar Swift J1818.0-1607 that describes its behavior, more complex than expected. A team of researchers led by Marcus Lower of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia observed it between May and October 2020 with the Parkes radio telescope noting that its emissions varied from that of a magnetar to that of a pulsar, alternating typical behaviors of these two types of neutron stars. It eventually settled into the magnetar state, and that can offer insights into the evolution of these strange objects.

Artist's concept of the planets orbiting HD 108236 (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” reports the confirmation of four exoplanets, one super-Earth and three mini-Neptunes, in the system of the star HD 108236. A team led by Tansu Daylan, postdoc Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, analyzed data collected by NASA’s TESS space telescope to identify those exoplanets. Two high school students also participated in this research as part of the Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. An article accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the discovery of another super-Earth in the same system by a team of researchers led by Andrea Bonfanti of the Austrian Academy of Sciences that used ESA’s CHEOPS space telescope.

The night side of Venus seen by the Akatsuki space probe (Image courtesy JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic)

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An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports research that offers an alternative explanation to the presence of phosphine on Venus. A team of researchers used a robust model of the conditions in Venus’s atmosphere reanalyzing the data that led to the conclusion that there was phosphine. The new conclusion is that the data are consistent with the presence of sulfur dioxide.