Astronomy / Astrophysics

Illustration of brown dwarf and Jupiter

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports the first measurement of the winds blowing in the atmosphere of the brown dwarf cataloged as 2MASS J10475385+2124234. A team of researchers led by Katelyn Allers of Bucknell University combined observations conducted with the Very Large Array (VLA) and NASA’s Spitzer space telescope to achieve this result. The method was already used for planets like Jupiter, so the news is its extension to a brown dwarf, and could also concern gaseous exoplanets.

The blazar 3C 279

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the creation of images of the blazar 3C 279 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration. One year after the presentation of the photo of the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Virgo A, also known as M87, the international collaboration that used a series of radio telescopes to obtain the most detailed astronomical image of the history of an object millions of light years away offers the results of another observation campaign. Again, an object of that type was at the center of the attention, but 3C 279 is about a hundred times farther away than Virgo A. Despite this, EHT captured the sharpest details ever obtained of a relativistic jet produced by a supermassive black hole, of which it was also possible to trace the origin.

Artist's concept of white dwarf pair

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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

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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))

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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.