Astronomy / Astrophysics

The galaxy clusters MOO J1014+0038 (left panel) and SPT-CL J2106-5844 (right panel) as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument at infrareds

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of a study on the so-called intracluster light that permeates galaxy clusters. Hyungjin Joo and M. James Jee of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine ten galaxy clusters and the glow within them. The surprising and therefore interesting discovery was that intracluster light is abundant even in the oldest clusters, a sign that the stars that emit it were ejected from their galaxies a long time ago. This suggests that this happened at the same time as the formation and growth of the clusters.

An image captured by the IoIO instrument on November 9, 2022, showing the sodium nebula emissions from the outburst originating from Io

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A violent volcanic outburst was detected on Jupiter’s moon Io by Jeff Morgenthaler using the Io Input/Output observatory (IoIO) at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI). The scientist of this non-profit organization based in Arizona has been monitoring Io since 2017, observing several outbursts but the one in autumn 2022 was the most violent. This monitoring can also be useful for the mission of NASA’s Juno space probe, in orbit around Jupiter, as NASA is planning a Io flyby in December 2023 in which its instruments will be able to carry out measurements of the emitted gases such as sodium and ionized sulfur.

The galaxy ESO 415-19 (Image ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)

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An image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy ESO 415-19 and its long arms, making it a decidedly unusual spiral galaxy. It’s a spiral galaxy but was included in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies due to the extraordinary extension of its arms. So far, no other traces of the cosmic interaction that caused this anomaly in ESO 415-19 have been found but its peculiarity made it an interesting object of observation with Hubble and other instruments. For publication, photos taken with Hubble’s ACS instrument were combined with others captured with the DECam camera on the Victor M. Blanco telescope.

Sand dunes covered by frost on Mars (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

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To celebrate the winter solstice on Earth and the start of winter in the northern hemisphere, NASA has released some photos captured on Mars by its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter space probe’s HiRISE camera showing what some Martian areas look like when it’s winter on the red planet. Seeing snowfall is still beyond the possibilities of the available instruments but frozen or at least frost-covered landscapes show some of the marvels of Mars.

Artist's illustration of a tidal disruption event (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the results of the observations of a supermassive black hole that is destroying a star. Cataloged as AT2021ehb, this is an event of the type technically called a tidal disruption event. A team of researchers used observations conducted with NASA’s NuSTAR and Swift space telescopes, the NICER instrument on the International Space Station, and other instruments to cover 430 days of the evolution of this process. This will help understand what happens to materials captured by a supermassive black hole before they’re completely swallowed.