Astronomy / Astrophysics

A binary system formed by high mass newborn stars

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes the first observation of a binary system formed by high mass newborn stars. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to study a star-forming region cataloged as IRAS07299-1651 where a cloud of gas and dust is collapsing adding materials to two protostars that have similar masses for a total of at least 18 solar masses and must still reach a state of stability. The observations indicate that this pair was born from the division of a single disk of gas and dust and now each of the two protostars is surrounded by its own disk.

The InSight lander seen by the TGO (Image ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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ESA has published a series of photos taken by its TGO space probe’s CaSSIS camera, part of the ExoMars mission run together with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. CaSSIS found NASA’s InSight lander on the surface of Mars along with its heat shield, the back shell that protected it during the descent and its parachute. In the course of its mission, CaSSIS also captured extraordinary images of various areas of the red planet showing the great potential to help researchers in their studies.

83 quasars discovered in the early universe

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5 articles published in the journals “The Astrophysical Journal Letters”, “The Astrophysical Journal” (here and here), “The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series” (paiwalled, available here) and “Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan” describe various aspects of the discovery of 83 new quasars dating back to about 13 billion years ago, studied together with 17 other quasars from that era that were already known. A team of researchers led by Yoshiki Matsuoka, now at the Japanese Ehime University, used the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), an instrument mounted on the Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Hawaii. Those quasars are powered by supermassive black holes and their study will help perfect our cosmological models.

Artist's concept of Kepler-62f, an exoplanet orbiting a K-class star (Image NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/Tim Pyle)

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An article published in the “Astrophysical Journal Letters” offers considerations on the possible advantages in the search for biosignatures such as the presence of oxygen and methane on exoplanets orbiting a K-class star, a bit smaller than the Sun. Giada Arney of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center tried to find out what those biosignatures and therefore the signs of the presence of life forms on an exoplanet in that kind of system could look like creating a series of computer simulations to understand where to look for traces of oxygen and methane.

Artistic concept of the Kepler-1658 system (Image courtesy Gabriel Perez Diaz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias)

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An article to be published in “The Astronomical Journal” offers evidence that confirms the existence of the exoplanet Kepler-1658b almost ten years after the detection of its first traces by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which made it the first candidate discovered in its mission. A team of researchers led by Ashley Chontos, a student at the University of Hawaii, reviewed the data collected after that first detection also using the technique of astroseismology to confirm that the planet actually exists. The results were also presented in recent days at the Kepler/K2 Science Conference held in Glendale, California.