Astronomy / Astrophysics

Artistic representazion of a solar storm stripping gas from Mars atmosphere (Image NASA/GSFC)

3

Two magazines host a number of articles describing the results of a year of the mission of NASA’s MAVEN space probe, “Science” and “Geophysical Research Letters”. The conclusions about why Mars lost most of its atmosphere were also explained in a NASA press conference held yesterday. Simply put, it was solar wind, which could take away the atmosphere thanks to the absence of a protective magnetic field transforming a planet that was originally similar to Earth in the desolate red planet we know today.

Diagram of coronal eruption. At the left the corona (feature in purplish colors) gathers inward, becoming brighter, before shooting away from the black hole (middle and right) (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

0

An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes the detailed observation of a huge X-ray eruption by a supermassive black hole known as Markarian 335 or Mrk 335. The Swift and NuSTAR space telescopes were used to examine this phenomenon of gigantic proportions concluding that it originated from a coronal ejection.

Artistic representation of the Voyager 1 space probe in deep space (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

1

An article published in “Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes a new analysis of the data collected by NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe to understand why certain detections were abnormal. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012 but the unclear data raised discussions. After about a year, NASA confirmed the event but some unexpected characteristics of the solar system borders required further studies.

The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on October 18, 2015 (Photo ESA/Rosetta/NavCam)

1

An article just published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of oxygen molecules in the coma of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s a surprising discovery, and in fact is the first time that this presence is detected in a comet because molecular oxygen is very reactive so it tends to combine for example with hydrogen to form water. This oxygen is a “survivor” from the time of formation of the solar system.

Artistic representation of a red giant with its powerful internal magnetic field (Image courtesy Rafael A. García (SAp CEA), Kyle Augustson (HAO), Jim Fuller (Caltech) & Gabriel Pérez (SMM, IAC), Photograph from AIA/SDO)

0

An article published in recent days in the journal “Science” describes research that has used the technique of asteroseismology to estimate the intensity of the magnetic fields in the vicinity of the cores of some red giants. This allowed to establish that their intensity can also be 10 million times greater than the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s the first time that scientists have been able to investigate within this type of star.