Astronomy / Astrophysics

Two possible pairs of supermassive black holes

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Two articles, one recently accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” and one published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” (MRAS), describe as many researches on pairs of supermassive black holes. In total, five candidates could form as many pairs of black holes with masses millions of times the Sun’s at the center of galaxies. At a time when gravitational wave research obtained historical results, very powerful sources could be very useful for new studies.

V766 Cent and its companion (Image ESO/M. Wittkowski (ESO))

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophisics” describes a study on the star V766 Cent, also known as the HR 5171 A, the largest yellow hypergiant discovered so far. A team of researchers used ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to conduct new observations and compare them to the previous ones. The observation of the evolution of V766 Cent is made more complicated by the fact that a companion passes in front of it.

The galaxy NGC 4490 (Image ESA/Hubble, NASA)

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An image of the galaxy NGC 4490 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows in detail its distorted shape. That’s the result of a clash with the smaller galaxy NGC 4485, which millions of years ago went through its bigger neighbor. Probably this is just the beginning of the merger between the two galaxies but for now this clash has created among other things the conditions for the formation of new stars within NGC 4490.

Reconstructed last image from Rosetta (Image ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

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ESA has released the last image taken by its Rosetta space probe before clashing on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at the end of its mission along with the story of its reconstruction. The image was incomplete, so initially it wasn’t recognized as such by the automatic processing software among the packets containing telemetry data it was transmitted with.

Pluto's area with ice blades (Image NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

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An article published in the magazine “Icarus” describes a research that offers an explanation for the origin ice blades that are tens of meters high found on Pluto. According to a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Moore, one of NASA’s New Horizons mission scientists, those blades originated in the freezing and subsequent erosion of methane at the highest altitudes of the dwarf planet, with a process similar to what happens on the Earth, for example on the Andes, but with much larger sizes.